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APPENDIX E: SCORES
These are the scores (out of 7) that were given to each recording by the three listener-judges. The first table gives the scores of the productions before the trainings, and the second table shows the scores after the trainings. The following abbreviations and symbols are used: S00 = Subject n°00; W00 = Word n°00; P00 […]
APPENDIX D: INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE RATING TASK
French speakers recorded English words and sentences. All you have to do is: listen to the sound file; score the recording on a 7-point scale (roughly: 1 = terrible/unintelligible/very strong foreign accent; 2 = very bad; 3 = bad; 4 = so-so; 5 = good; 6 = very good; 7 = nativelike/ no foreign accent). […]
APPENDIX C: STIMULI
The tables below present the stimuli that were used in the experiment, i.e. the words and the sentences, as well as details about each of them. The following abbreviations are used: N° = number of the item; W = word; P = phrase; # Syll. = number of syllables that the item consists of; V/C […]
APPENDIX B: FRENCH-SPEAKING SUBJECTS
Retour au menu : Experimental research into the acquisition of English rhythm and prosody by French learners
APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE OF SELECTION
1. Nom : 2. Prénom : 3. Âge : 4. Pays de résidence : 5. Nationalité : 6. Langue maternelle : 7. Quelles études faites-vous ? 8. À quel âge avez-vous commencé l’anglais ? 9. Quelle est votre moyenne d’anglais (sur 20) approximative en milieu scolaire ? 10. Pensez-vous avoir un accent anglais britannique, américain, […]
REFERENCES
Abercrombie, D. (1967). Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Atoye, R. O. (2005). Non-Native Perception and Interpretation of English Intonation. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 14 (1), 26-42. Auer, P. (1993). Is a Rhythm-Based Typology Possible? A Study of the Role of Prosody in Phonological Typology. KontRI Working Paper No. 21. Konstanz, Fachgruppe […]
5.2. Future work
The creation of this pilot experiment now serves as a basis for future comparative studies on the acquisition of English segments and suprasegments by French learners. Given the limitations of this study, more elaborate experiments investigating the role of prosody in intelligibility, foreign-accentedness, and communication in general, are required. As was reminded several times throughout […]
5.1. Conclusion
Throughout this work, the main objective has been to enhance the role of prosody in L2 phonology acquisition, and its contribution to intelligibility. In the theoretical section (Chapter 1), we saw that, interestingly enough, French teachers of English as a Foreign Language tend to focus on phonemes when it comes to pronunciation teaching, thereby overlooking […]
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 5.1. Conclusion 5.2. Future work REFERENCES Retour au menu : Experimental research into the acquisition of English rhythm and prosody by French learners
4.3.2. Within-groups: Hypotheses 3 and 4
The within-groups analysis of the pre- and post-training scores was supposed to show that both groups had better scores after their respective trainings than before the trainings (Hypothesis 3), even if this might have seemed to go without saying. Indeed Group A increased by 23.5%, and Group B increased by 8%, as was reported in […]
4.3.1. Between-groups: Hypotheses 1 and 2
The major claim of this work was that the importance of prosody in the acquisition of English as a Foreign Language by French learners is as strong as, indeed stronger than, the importance of segmental features such as phonemes. By extension, our view was that intelligibility and the welfare of communication greatly depended on the […]
4.3. Discussion of the results
4.3. Discussion of the results 4.3.1. Between-groups: Hypotheses 1 and 2 4.3.2. Within-groups: Hypotheses 3 and 4 Retour au menu : Experimental research into the acquisition of English rhythm and prosody by French learners
4.2.2.4 Evolutions of Group A vs. Group B for phrases and words (Hypothesis 4 n.2)
As far as the productions of read phrases are concerned, we have hypothesized that Group B would evince a stronger evolution than Group A, mainly because Training B included oral practice at the level of the entire phrase. Yet, the opposite is actually found; the segmental group showed a greater evolution from pre-training to post-training […]
4.2.2.3 Overall evolutions of Group A vs. Group B (Hypothesis 4 n.1)
Analyzing which of the two groups has evolved more than the other after the trainings enables us to get further insight into whether prosodic features can actually help learners improve their production skills at the segmental level and not only at the suprasegmental level, as is claimed in Birdsong (2003), for example. In fact, a […]
4.2.2.2 Evolution of Group B (Hypothesis 3 n.2)
Concerning the evolution within Group B, the hypothesis is also confirmed, as can be seen in Table 5, which presents the detailed mean scores before and after the suprasegmental training and the evolutions in percentage, whether it is an increase (+) or a decrease (-): Table 5: Pre-training to post-training evolution of Group B Surprisingly […]
4.2.2.1 Evolution of Group A (Hypothesis 3 n.1)
As expected, the subjects belonging to Group A have obtained better scores after the training than before the training. This result proves that the segmental training has helped them increase their pronunciation capacities concerning read speech. Table 4 below shows the mean pre-training scores and post-training scores that were given to Group A by the […]
4.2.2. Results
In order to calculate the evolution of the learner’s pronunciation skills within each group from the first recordings to the second recordings, the following mathematical formula was used: [(target value – source value) / source value ] x 100 The source value corresponds to the the pre-training score, and the target value is the posttraining […]
4.2.1. Hypotheses
First and foremost, it should be reminded that the rating task was blind, and the pre-training and post-training recordings were completely randomized before being given to the listenerjudges. In order to investigate the importance of prosody with respect to segments in EFL acquisition, we should now consider how the French subjects’ production skills evolved from […]
4.2. Within-groups design
4.2.1. Hypotheses Hypothesis 3 Hypothesis 4 4.2.2. Results Evolution of Group A (Hypothesis 3 #1 Evolution of Group B (Hypothesis 3 #2 Overall evolutions of Group A vs. Group B (Hypothesis 4 #1 Evolutions of Group A vs. Group B for phrases and words (Hypothesis 4 #2) Retour au menu : Experimental research into the […]
4.1.2.3 Scores for the phrases (Hypothesis 2 n.2)
As Training B was based on prosodic features and thereby implied oral practice at the sentence level, Group B should have obtained better scores for phrase reading than Group A. The analysis of the mean post-training scores for phrases, detailed in Table 3 below, indeed seems to confirm Hypothesis 2 #2, contrary to the mean […]
4.1.2.2 Scores for the words (Hypothesis 2 n.1)
Given that Group A received a training at the phoneme-level and the word-level, the participants of this group should have better scores at individual words than those in Group B, who received a training that was more centred on the whole phrase. Yet, if Birdsong’s (2003) claim about the link between prosody and segmentals is […]
4.1.2.1 Overall post-training scores (Hypothesis 1)
Interestingly enough, the overall comparison of the post-training scores (marked out of seven: cf. 3.2.3.) obtained by the two groups reveals that neither group is better than the other after the trainings. As a consequence, neither training has had a better effect on the French EFL learners’ read production capacities than the other. The detailed […]
4.1.2. Results
4.1.2. Results 4.1.2.1 Overall post-training scores (Hypothesis 1) 4.1.2.2 Scores for the words (Hypothesis 2 #1) 4.1.2.3 Scores for the phrases (Hypothesis 2 #2) Retour au menu : Experimental research into the acquisition of English rhythm and prosody by French learners
4.1.1. Hypotheses
The verification of the central hypothesis about the results of the experiment implies a crossgroup comparison of the scores (a thorough account of which is given in Appendix E). The first way of looking at the completed experiment is to compare the post-training scores of Group A with those of Group B. Thereby, knowing which […]
4.1. Between-groups design
4.1.1. Hypotheses Hypothesis 1 Hypothesis 2 4.1.2. Results Overall post-training scores (Hypothesis 1) Scores for the words (Hypothesis 2 #1) Scores for the phrases (Hypothesis 2 #2) Retour au menu : Experimental research into the acquisition of English rhythm and prosody by French learners
CHAPTER 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter, a detailed analysis of the results of the experiment is provided. After the three listener-judges had finished giving the four hundred scores, the latter were typed into tables, found in Appendix E. A close examination of these scores, as well as the calculation of each group’s mean scores, will enable us to […]
3.3. Summary
Thanks to the ten participants and the three listener-judges, this pilot experiment was carried out in good conditions. Despite some people’s constraints of time, every recording and rating was completed well. Typical French-speaking non-English students participated. Furthermore, the trainings of the experiment were redolent of typical pronunciation classes in a secondary school or to non-specialists. […]
3.2.3. Listener-judges and rating procedure
For the ratings of the productions, we followed Derwing, Munro and Wiebe’s (1998), Missaglia’s (1999), and Birdsong’s (2003) experiments, in so far as we resorted to subjective evaluations by listeners. Three listener-judges kindly accepted to score all four hundred items, despite the large amount of work and time that it implied(2) – using the scores […]
3.2.2.5 Post-training recordings
The post-training recordings were carried out in the exact same conditions as the pretraining recordings. For the second recording sessions, the subjects were supposed to take into account all that was done during their respective trainings, although this was not made clear or explicitly compulsory to them. That method reinforced the similarity with a typical […]
3.2.2.4 Trainings
When the pre-training recording sessions were over, the trainings could start. Group A received a training on English individual sounds, and Group B received a training on English rhythm and prosody. The trainings took place in an empty room at the University of Lille III, and they lasted a few hours each. Since all five […]