This case study focuses on investigating and describing the speech
disfluencies in three English dialogues with three proficient non-native
speakers. The aim of the study is to qualitatively examine the distribution of speech
disfluencies in the analyzed dialogues and discuss the findings relative to previous research on speech fluency and disfluency.
The study participants are independent users of English, who share a
similar proficiency level. The analysis is based on four measurable
variables that, according to previous research, are related to perceived
fluency and disfluency in dialogue (1. *rate of speech* – the number of words
per minute of speech, 2. *breakdown fluency* – the number and length of
pauses, 3. *repair fluency* – the number of false starts, corrections, and
repetitions, 4. *correlation of speech disfluencies with the flow of the dialogue* – the number of disfluencies per one illocutionary act type).
Most disfluencies in the data occur at the beginning of a dialogue act.
Major factors that may cause disfluency include difficulties in structuring
the phrase, remembering a rarely used word, describing complex entities,
and hesitating.
Confirming the previous findings, the analysis showed that
more cognitively demanding tasks lead to higher numbers of disruptions.
However, some results of the data analysis appear to contradict the
previous experiments. As such, the paper found out that the fastest speaker
produced the highest number of repair disfluencies, which intersects with
the previously established correlation between language proficiency
and rate of speech.