Reconstructing EFL Students’ Speaking Flow Disruptions through Idea-Chunking Rehearsals and Partner Listening Journals

Abstract

Speaking fluency remains a persistent challenge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, particularly at the secondary school level, where students often experience disruptions in speech flow due to difficulties in transforming conceptual intentions into coherent spoken output. These disruptions not only affect linguistic accuracy but also hinder real-time communication and discourse coherence. This study aimed to investigate how targeted pedagogical interventions, specifically idea chunking rehearsals and partner listening journals, could reconstruct speaking flow disruptions and enhance fluency and coherence among Indonesian high school EFL students. Adopting a process-oriented qualitative research approach grounded in theories of cognitive fluency and discourse organization, the study analyzed students’ spoken performance before and after the interventions. Data were collected through audio-recorded spontaneous and integrated speaking tasks administered during classroom activities. Qualitative discourse analysis was employed to identify recurring types of speaking disruptions, including hesitation clustering, disconnected nominal references, and collapsed verb chains. The findings indicated that students were able to internalize the targeted strategies, leading to improved real-time message planning, monitoring, and delivery. Pedagogically, the findings suggest that integrating process-based fluency interventions into speaking instruction can help learners manage cognitive load during speech production. These results offer practical implications for EFL teachers and curriculum designers seeking to address fluency development through cognitively informed and classroom-applicable strategies.