{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.016080402010050253, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004020100502512563, 'mean_word_length': 5.467532467532467, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Fluency and structural complexity as predictors of L2 oral proficiency

Automaticity and real-time aspects of performance are directly relevant to L2 spoken language proﬁciency. This paper analyzes data from L2 speakers of English and Spanish spread over a range of proﬁciency levels as identiﬁed by traditional holistic, rubric-based human ratings. In spontaneous speech samples from these L2 populations, we studied timed measures of spoken ﬂuency (linguistic units per time) that co-vary with proﬁciency level and compared the timed measures to indices of the linguistic complexity of the same spoken material. Results indicate that duration-based ﬂuency measures yield as much or more information about proﬁciency as do structural complexity measures. These empirical ﬁndings suggest that expert perception of oral proﬁciency relate to automatic, real-time aspects of speaking and that the oral proﬁciency construct may be enriched by adding timing to its communicative/functional framework.