In spoken interaction, people often produce ee..., err..., ehm..., or well, you know, I mean, kind of, and so on. According to Baalen (2001, par.7), these kinds of utterances are called fillers. He defines fillers as sounds or words or phrases that could appear anywhere in the sentence and that could be deleted from the sentence without a change in content. On the other simple words, fillers are a break in the flow of speech (Yule, 2006, p.242). A study shows that fillers make up around 6% of words in spontaneous speech (Tree, 1995; Eklund, 2004, cited in Marback, 2009, par.1). Most people, including the students in the English Department, Petra Christian University, produce fillers in their spoken interaction. Here are some examples:
A : Wanna do The Road Not Taken now? I mean the assignment for poetry, you know final exam.
B : Well, we do it at ehm... 4 o'clock.
The words I mean, you know, well, and ehm... in the utterances above are the examples of fillers. According to Rose (1998, p.7), those fillers can be classified into two categories, that is non-word fillers or unlexicalized fillers such as ee...., err..., ehm... and word/phrase fillers or lexicalized fillers such as well, kind of, you know. Moreover, Matthei and Roeper (1983, p.163) add one more classification of fillers, that is silent pauses, in addition to non-word and word/phrase fillers. These silent pauses fill the break in the flow of speech by silence for a certain period. Those three categories of fillers are produced by the students of the English Department when they are speaking. Most students do not realize the fillers they produce since basically fillers occur spontaneously in spontaneous interaction.
Those non-word, word/phrase, and silent pause fillers have several functions when they are produced in a spoken interaction, such as to help the speaker to think about what to say next, to fill the pauses, to correct mistakes when the speaker says something wrong and suddenly revises the mistakes, toÂ
interrupt the conversation or even to hold the conversation turn, to empathize with what is said by the speaker so that the listeners will pay attention to the utterances produced, and to mitigate (Rose, 1998, Stenstrm, 1994, Wu, 2001, and Baalen, 2001). These functions are very important since they will make the conversation run smoothly like oil if fillers are produced appropriately in the conversation (Juan, 2006, par.2).
However, not all English Department students really understand that actually fillers play a very important role in conversation. Mostly they use fillers with just two functions only, that is to fill the pauses and to think what to say next, whereas fillers have at least seven different functions that can be used appropriately as intended.
The occurrence of fillers, such as ee, err, ehm, well, kind of, you know, and even the silence, and the use of several functions of fillers, such as to fill the pauses and to think what to say next, by the English Department students in the conversation may be influenced by the length of studying time of the students themselves. It is supposed that the longer the studying time, the more the speaking skills the students have, then the more appropriate the functions of fillers used in conversation. Different length of studying time may give an impact on how the students will produce fillers for different purposes appropriately. In this research, the speaking levels that the students passed may help a lot in deciding the length of studying time for the students since, in the English Department, Petra Christian University, there are six levels of speaking class that should be taken per semester in turn. Those students should pass these speaking classes from the first until the sixth levels, which is Daily Conversation, Daily Extended Conversation, Discussion, Debate, Negotiation, and Public Speaking.
The first semester students take Daily Conversation for their speaking class, while the seventh semester students have taken Daily Conversation until Public Speaking. Based on the Petra Christian University English Department Catalog 2007-2008, the first semester students who take Daily Conversation class are expected to be able to handle a variety of simple, basic, communicative tasks and social settings. Higher than that, the second semester students or Extended Daily Conversation class students should be able to handle most complicatedÂ
communicative tasks and social settings. The third semester students who take Discussion class are supposed to be able to lay arguments, to support opinions, and to give appropriate feedback in small social encounters. Then, the students in the fourth semester who are taking Debate class are demanded to be able to participate effectively in a formal trade of ideas on controversial issues from both sides -- the pros and cons -- and to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments given. After that, the fifth semester students or Negotiation class students are supposed to be able to participate persuasively in formal negotiation in business, professional, and political meeting situations. Finally, the highest level of speaking class, which is Public speaking class, is supposed to enable the sixth semester students to present ideas convincingly in formal meetings. Based on the description above, the first semester students are supposed to have the speaking skill in handling a variety of simple, basic, communicative tasks and social settings, while the seventh semester students are supposed to have all speaking skills mentioned above.
