I am an applied linguist specializing in second language learning. I am particularly interested in questions related to second language oral proficiency, and I approach this theme from the perspective of speech fluency. Speech fluency is often studied quantitatively from an individual’s perspective with measures pertaining to speech rate, pausing, and repair, but I have extended the examination of fluency to interactive data and mixed-methods approaches in my research. Unlike in monologic speech, the participants’ individual skills are not sufficient for maintaining fluency in multimodal interaction. Instead, fluency should be perceived as a mutually maintained phenomenon in these settings. In my research, I have also explored factors influencing speech fluency, including the importance of task type and individual speaking style.
I have worked as a university lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Turku since 2022. During 2024–2028, I lead the project “L2 interactional fluency across contexts” (ILFACT) as an Academy Research Fellow. Previously, I have worked as a project researcher (2020–2021) in the project “Fluency across Multilingual Speakers” (MultiFluency), funded by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, and as a postdoctoral researcher (2022–2024) in the project “Fluency and Disfluency Features in L2 Speech” (FDF2), funded by the Research Council of Finland.
I am a member of the research group FlowLang and a member of the executive team for Leala, The Centre for Language Learning Research at the University of Turku. During 2017–2020, I was a member of the executive board for the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics (AFinLA; vice-chair during 2019–2020). Since 2014, I have been a member of the AFinLA research network “Speech and Spoken Language Research”.
Website: pauliinapeltonen.com