AM I A TROUBLE MAKER? FILLER WORDS IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH; STRATEGIES OR INTERFERENCE (PRELIMINARY STUDY)

Abstract

The present paper attempts to address the subtopic of the seminar, language acquisition, by going through the phenomenon of filler words in students’ spontaneous speech. In addition, this paper also tries to scrutinize the two opposing questions; 1) are filler words intentionally produced by the students as the planning process of communicative strategies, and 2) are they the results of the interference which cause speech disfluencies? Responding to the first question, this paper tries to look at the role of filler words if they are considered as the communicative strategies. Meanwhile, to respond to the second question this paper tries to determine the sources of the occurrences of those filler words. The subject for this study are the the Indonesian learners of English at the Language Training Center (UMY). The spoken data was derived largely during the dialogue sessions.