Assessing ESL Fluency through the Taboo Word-Guessing Game

1. Loquaciousness in Persons Whose Native Tongue is Not the One Spoken in America Fluency in ESL Speakers by Brynn Ladd

2. An English as a Second Language (ESL) speaker's creative ability in language is an accurate measure of fluency. Proposed OutcomeHypothesis

3. System of ExperimentationMethodology • Participants • 2 experiment variations • Based on the Hasbro game Taboo

4. Word-guessing Party ActivityThe Game Taboo • Players are required to explain a target word • No gestures are used (unlike Charades)‏ • The target word or a variant of it may not be said (i.e. target: reread, neither reread, nor read may be said)‏

5. Experiment • 3 ESL Speakers • 1 native English listeners • 10 words • Comparing the variety of the speakers to each other, when the reference listener is control • Interesting results

6. Speaker 1 (5 yrs) – its a flying mammal, its probably the only flying mammal I know of, it's related to a action movie that recently came out and everybody appears to like it, the dark knight, so I guess people can guess what this word is Speaker 2 (11 yrs) – I think it can be, it's a baseball stick, it can be used for playing baseball, and I'm not sure but it can also be a rat with wings Speaker 3 (16 yrs) – let's see, it's an animal that can fly, and it's like, I don't know, many people associate it with vampires Example

7. Speaker 1 (5 yrs) – its a flying mammal, its probably the only flying mammal I know of, it's related to a action movie that recently came out and everybody appears to like it, the dark knight, so I guess people can guess what this word is Speaker 2 (11 yrs) – I think it can be, it's a baseball stick, it can be used for playing baseball, and I'm not sure but it can also be a rat with wings Speaker 3 (16 yrs) – let's see, it's an animal that can fly, and it's like, I don't know, many people associate it with vampires Example Word: bat

8. Trends Noticed • There was more variety • The speakers applied to general, rather than personal things • More likely to include more definitions

9. Scoring • 1 point correct definition • 1 point multiple definitions • 1 point general application • 1 point application to listener • 1 point keyword

10. Results • Speaker 1 (5 yrs): 22 • Speaker 2 (11 yrs): 19 • Speaker 3 (16 yrs): 14 Interesting note: Knowing them personally, it was interesting how their personalities came out.

11. Research to be done at a time not in the present or pastFuture Work • Experiments: • have multiple people score each speaker, average • distraction free environment • Expand the participant group • Compare against standardized fluency test • Focus the experiment: language, years studying • See which version of double-stress words is more common

12. The Point Where the Presentation TerminatesThe end.