The Role of Attention in Monitoring Second Language Speech Production

The study investigates the role of attention in monitoring second language speechproduction by means of analyzing the distribution and frequency of self‐repairs and the correction rate of errors in the speech of 30 Hungarian learners of English at 3 levels of proficiency and of 10 native speakers of Hungarian. The results indicate that the amount of attention paid to the linguistic form of the utterance does not vary at different stages of L2 competence and that the distribution of attention in monitoring for errors is markedly different inL1 and L2. In the case of advanced L2 speakers, the extra attentional resources made available by the automaticity of certain encoding processes were used for checking the discourse‐level aspects of their message.