Presenting in English or Swedish: Differences in speaking rate

This paper attempts to quantify differences in speaking rates in first and second languages, in the context of the growth of English as a lingua franca, where more L2 speakers than ever before are using English to perform tasks in their working environments. One such task is the oral presentation. The subjects in this study were fourteen fluent English second language speakers who held the same oral presentation twice, once in English and once in their native Swedish. The temporal variables of phrase length (mean length of runs in syllables) and speaking rate in syllables per second were calculated for each language. Speaking rate was found to be 23% slower when using the second language, and phrase length was found to be 24% shorter.