Fluency in second language writing: A developmental perspective

The paper presents a longitudinal study of writing fluency in second language students. The aim was to follow the development of the students’ fluency during a three-year period in which they studied Swedish as a second language. Fifteen Polish university students participated in the study. The analysis shows that fluency develops non-linearly with some peaks in the average developmental curve. Furthermore, we observed both between- and within-individual variability in fluency in text production. The development of fluency is unpredictable and no one subject mirrors in their development the average curve. Individual differences were observed at every step of second language development. The analysis shows that writers who are slow at typing are not automatically less fluent and that subjects who develop more slowly can achieve a high level of fluency in writing. In general, writers who were slower and less fluent at the beginning made the greatest progress in fluency during the three-year period, compared with those who were more skilled with regard to both language and typing, who achieved a certain level of fluency faster than their fellow students.