ABSTRACT
So far, we have looked at basic studies attempting to measure L2 utterance fluency (Chapter 2), at how researchers have addressed fluency from a cognitive psychological and a general skills perspective (Chapters 3 and 4), and at research that takes into account the social dimensions of learning, identity, and motivation (Chapter 5). This chapter addresses the fifth anchor question-What insights concerning L2 fluency can be gleaned from other branches of the cognitive sciences?—by looking briefly at selected illustrative studies taken from three perspectives not yet represented. These are neuroimaging studies of fluency, formal modeling approaches to fluency, and philosophical approaches to expertise and fluency. These perspectives and the ones presented in earlier chapters should be considered as complementary; no one of them is the “correct” or the “most promising” way to address fluency issues. As will be discussed in the closing chapter, these approaches-because of the various ways they converge on fluency phenomena (Figure 1.3, Chapter 1)— together comprise a cognitive science approach to the study of fluency. It goes without saying that each of the three areas presented in this chapter has a much larger literature area behind it. The aim here is to briefly highlight the possibilities of convergence across three areas of thought where, at the moment, there is relatively little cross-communication.
