L2 English repair fluency differences between L1 Finnish speakers in the NHL : Rookies vs. Veterans

Abstract

This BA thesis examines differences in English second language (L2) fluency between Finnish speakers in the National Hockey League (NHL) by comparing players who have spent differing amounts of time in North America. One group consists of players who have played eight seasons or longer in the NHL, while the other consists of players who have played a year or less in English- speaking countries. The aim of this study is to examine whether time spent in language immersion correlates with the number of repair fluencies per 100 words and whether there are differences between the groups in where repetitions occur in speech. The material consists of publicly available spoken English interviews which were transcribed using AI-assisted transcription software and manually corrected. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative part of the study examined repetitions, reformulations, replacements, and false starts per 100 words, while clause-initial and clause-within repetitions were analysed in the qualitative part. The Rookie group used slightly more repetitions per 100 words compared to the Veteran group. However, the difference was not statistically significant. This thesis suggests that immersion may affect L2 fluency, but a larger and more generalisable study is still needed. Clause-within repetitions and repetition clustering appeared more frequently in the more disfluent cases, whereas clause-initial repetitions seemed to function more as planning mechanisms similarly to pauses at clause boundaries. In this sense, repetitions may function in a similar way as pauses in speech production.