The Effect of English Text Readability on Speech Duration of Second Language Learners

In order to facilitate active communication among people of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, it is necessary to learn a second language that is linguistically different from one’s native language. The difficulty in learning second language is thought to depend on readability. Most research on the validity of readability assessment has focused on native speakers. Moreover, most of the few studies of readability with second language learners have focused on textual data. This study analyzed actual speech data to determine the effects of word frequencies, syllable structures, and grammatical functions used to estimate the relation with readability on word duration. We compared English word durations in native English speakers and native Japanese speakers. It is hypothesized that highly readable words, i.e., those that are simple and familiar, would be easier for Japanese to utter and shorter in duration, but the opposite was found in the experiment. This suggests that the features adopted for native English speakers as readability indicators are not fully compatible with Japanese speakers.