CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation (JSLP)

PROSODIC FEATURES OF LANGUAGE LEARNERS' FLUENCY

In the past, fluency was often ignored in speech prosody research (as reflected in the Handbook of

Language Prosody (2022) and in the 'Speech Prosody' conferences). Moreover, fluency and timing are only

rarely treated together with intonation-related aspects in L2 research. However, a broader ranging view

on L2 sentence prosody would be beneficial to the construction of theories concerning the acquisition of

L2 prosody and applications such as assessments in teaching, exercises for individual learning,

assessments and automatic testing of spoken performances. Likewise, research of language learning does

not seem to be very much integrated into speech prosody research. This concerns both theoretical and

methodological aspects but also acquisition and annotation of learner data, e.g., in learner corpora.

Thus, the scope of this special issue includes topics like measuring fluency, assessment of fluency (human

experts, non-experts, and machines), learner corpora and annotation of disfluencies, elements and

combinations of disfluencies (e.g. filler particles, disfluent pauses, lengthenings, repetitions, repairs),

varying degrees of fluency in different speech styles and tasks, fluency and L2 proficiency levels,

intonational aspects of fluency, visual aspects of fluency (e.g. hand-arm gestures, eye-gazing, torso

movement), teaching methods for fluency improvement in L2 speech production and perception.

This special issue is a sequel of the workshop with the same name held in Leiden (The Netherlands) in July

2024 (https://l2fluency.lst.uni-saarland.de ). It was organised by Jürgen Trouvain, Bernd Möbius (both

Saarland University, Germany) and Nivja de Jong (Leiden University) who also act as guest editors of this

special issue.

The Journal of Second Language Pronunciation invites proposals for papers related to cutting-edge

research on prosodic features in L2 speech fluency to be published in a special issue of the Journal of

Second Language Pronunciation.

Invited papers should fit the general guidelines of the journal, see https://benjamins.com/catalog/jslp.

Submission Procedures

Abstracts considered for the special issue should be submitted to <JournalSLP@gmail.com> by March 21,

2025 by 11:59 pm Central Standard Time in the United States. All abstracts should be pdf files and should

contain three pages, with the title, the authors’ names, contact information and affiliations on page 1, the

content with up to 500 words on page 2, and illustrations, tables, and references on page 3.

Timeline for the Special Issue

Abstract due for consideration (updated): March 21, 2025 (submit to JournalSLP@gmail.com .)

Notification of invitation (updated): April 25, 2025

Full paper due: July 30, 2025 (submit to the JSLP online portal)

Reviews expected: October 15, 2025

Revised paper due: November 15, 2025

Feedback on revisions (as needed): December 19, 2025

Final paper due: January 30, 2025

Paper published in JSLP: in second half of 2026

Questions about submission requirements should be directed to the editor at JournalSLP@gmail.com .

Jürgen Trouvain, Bernd Möbius and Nivja de Jong