Influences of Early English Language Teaching on Oral Fluency and Second Language Pronunciation Proficiency Development in a Classroom Setting

Running head: CRITICAL REVIEW 1
ACQUISITION OF THE SECOND LANGUAGE
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CRITICAL REVIEW 2
FIRST REVIEW
de Wolf, S., Smit, N., & Lowie, W. (2017). Influences of early English language teaching on
oral fluency. Elt Journal, 71(3), 341-353.
The De Wolf et al. (2017) article is about the influences of previous English teaching on
being orally fluent. The authors of the report wrote research to find out whether the age affects
the acquisition of L2 and oral fluency. The study also examined the advantages of fluency that
were observed from kids who were exposed to the English language early and compared the
merits to those kids who were exposed to the English language late. The article also focused on
the effect of fluency in young scholars after they left school.
De Wolf, Smit & Lowie (2017), explains how the oral fluency is a key to the learners in
English teaching. The study involves the Dutch Elementary schools. The participants for the
research were between four and five years old in the first grade while the new learners were
chosen between the ages of ten and twelve. The choice of this group of participants was very
essential for the entire research because they shared the common characteristics.Out of the
choice the primary objective of the research was achieved (Ellis, 2008). The researchers had to
consider some factors to ensure genuine results. These factors were: Language and enunciation
rate, mean pause duration in speaking time, average syllable duration in seconds, and the number
of pause per minute and the phonation time ratio. The above factors were crucial in boosting the
oral fluency. The researchers wanted to check out how the following has connection with the
verbal fluency.Some of the factors include the following: the acquisition of L2, age, and how
the advantages of early exposure to fluency differed from the late exposure in verbal fluency and
determine whether learning out of class was beneficial too (Myles & Mitchell 2014). Early
learning of the English language motivates oral fluency.

CRITICAL REVIEW 3
The researchers explain the findings of the study in the following ways:
 The age plays a vital role in determining the fluency of the language of the kids.
The receptive skills also have a significant influence on the development of the
powers that alters oral fluency.
 The learners’ exposure outside a classroom setting affected fluency in the English
language in a significant way.
 The development of the fluency in speaking was also affected by the
environmental setting.
 The implications of the research focused on the age and the grade of the pupils.
The results showed that the learners in the early grade have better writing and reading
skills as compared to the learners in their late grade since they were able to learn new words and
grammar faster . Research by many scientists has proven that young kids can master a new
language more swiftly than the older kids. However, the learners in the late grade have better
listening and reading skills as compared to the early learners because the former had a stronger
cognitive ability as compared to the later. For this reason, some researchers support the view that
the receptive skills also affects the oral fluency (Ellis, 2008). The results showed the reasons why
the receptive skills influence the productive powers, and this improves the verbal fluency of the
learners. However, not all receptive skills affects the learners' verbal fluency. Some researchers
argued that learning outside the regular curriculum positively affects the verbal fluency (Gu &
Benson, 2015). Other researchers argued that the frequent contact with TV programs and some
books and novels added new vocabularies to the learners thus improving their English language.