Grant recipients:
Svetlana Kaminskaïa and Dominique Louër, French Studies
(Project timeline: May 2018-April 2019)
Description
The proposed research aims examining language learners’ progress in a French pronunciation course. Also, it intends to identify aspects of the Anglophone learners’ first language that are transferred in their second language oral production and keep persisting at the end of the course. The objectives are both pedagogical and theoretical. First, we aim to identify aspects that need more attention and practice in class or in the language lab. Second, the results of this research will help better understand the interaction between English and French sound systems. To achieve our purposes, we intend to analyze text reading recordings in English and two recordings completed by students as course assignments (pre-test and post-test). The results of this research will contribute to enhancing teaching, will lead to better students’ experience and deeper learning, and will add to linguistic and to second language learning theories.
Research Questions
- What pronunciation aspects of French appear the most challenging to our Anglophone students and remain under addressed?
- How the course should be reassessed in order to address them?
- How do our observations contribute to previous research on French as a Second Language?
Findings/Insights
The findings are only preliminary at this stage and scope over a subset of data; the analysis is on-going. Among the preliminary results is an analysis of the production of voiced and voiceless stops, which shows that the language learners transfer their native (English) language model into French. No difference between consonants was found in their text readings in English and the pre-test text reading in French. The analysis of post-test reading in French is on-going.
Another pilot study focused on intonation and stress compared pre-test and post-test and found that students showed improvement in this aspect of French language