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Canadian Modern Language Review/ La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes

Volume 71, Number 1, February 2015

http://bit.ly/cmlr711

This issue contains:



Le rôle de la prononciation dans l’intercompréhension entre locuteurs de français lingua franca

Sara Kennedy, Danielle Guénette, Jacinthe Murphy and Suzanne Allard



L’objectif de cette étude était d’identifier les aspects de la prononciation en français qui ont mené à des problèmes de compréhension durant les interactions entre des locuteurs de français comme lingua franca. Neuf paires d’apprenants de français langue seconde inscrits à un cours de niveau intermédiaire ou avancé dans une université francophone au Québec ont accompli quatre tâches interactives en français, puis ont visionné les enregistrements de leurs échanges et commenté les problèmes de compréhension survenus, réels ou potentiels. Dix-huit pour cent (18 %) des problèmes de compréhension étaient attribuables à la prononciation, particulièrement la production de segments, y compris la correspondance entre l’orthographe et la phonologie ainsi que l’influence de l’anglais. Par contre, très peu de problèmes étaient associés à la liaison ou à d’autres aspects suprasegmentaux. En outre, aucune différence significative n’a été observée entre les paires de L1 commune et de L1 différentes dans la fréquence des problèmes de compréhension causés par la prononciation. Des pistes pédagogiques sont proposées pour le développement de tâches de perception et de prononciation des aspects segmentaux et suprasegmentaux et pour l’enseignement des stratégies de communication. DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.2139

http://bit.ly/cmlr711a



Kick the Ball or Kicked the Ball? Perception of the Past Morpheme –ed by Second Language Learners

Philippa Bell, Pavel Trofimovich, Laura Collins



Explanations for the well-documented second language (L2) learning challenge of the English regular past include verb semantics (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), phonetic properties (Goad, White, & Steele, 2003), and frequency factors (Collins, Trofimovich, White, Cardoso, & Horst, 2009). Difficulty perceiving past-tense morphology (i.e., hearing –ed in the input) has received less research attention. In this study, we explored the roles of three perceptual factors (phonological environment, speech rate, semantic clues) among 106 L2 learners and 81 English speakers of a similar age. Experiment 1 was a forced-choice auditory identification task contrasting perceptually ‘easy’ ([əd] + vowel) and ‘hard’ ([t] or [d] + consonant) regular past contexts at normal conversational speed. Experiment 2 contrasted easy and hard contexts at a slowed-down speech rate. Experiment 3 included time adverbials that matched or mismatched the tense marker (e.g., walked the dog now vs. walked the dog yesterday). The L2 learners behaved at just above chance at normal conversational speed in both contexts, and slowing speech down helped them in easy contexts only. The English speakers were more accurate in easy than in hard contexts regardless of speech rate. Both L2 learners and English speakers also relied on adverbials at the expense of the phonetic cue to past morphology (–ed). Implications of these findings for the roles of input and frequency in L2 learning, and for pronunciation teaching (i.e., setting reasonable learning goals) are discussed. DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.2075

http://bit.ly/cmlr711b



The DELF in Canada: Perceptions of Students, Teachers, and Parents

Larry Vandergrift



The Diplôme d’études de langue française (DELF) has recently gained attention in Canada for its potential as a national French second language (FSL) proficiency test. This article explores the perceptions of students, teachers, and parents in various school jurisdictions across Canada on a range of issues related to the DELF test and diploma. Participants completed online questionnaires. Findings showed that a high percentage of all respondent groups deemed the DELF to be a fair and appropriate measure of FSL proficiency and would recommend the test to others. This result suggests that the DELF shows promise as an appropriate measure of FSL proficiency; however, some factors will need attention before the DELF can fully realize that potential. The article concludes with implications of the findings for FSL proficiency testing in Canada and suggestions for further research. DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.1752

http://bit.ly/cmlr711c



Eliciting Production of L2 Target Structures through Priming Activities

Kim McDonough, Pavel Trofimovich, Heike Neumann



This study focuses on the pedagogical applications of structural priming research in an English for academic purposes (EAP) context, investigating whether priming activities are an effective tool for eliciting production of target grammatical structures. University students across four EAP classes carried out a total of 6 information-exchange activities over a 13-week semester. Some students received information-exchange activities that provided models of the target structures (e.g., primes), while other students received activities without any models. Analysis of the students’ novel utterances generated from sentence fragments (e.g., prompts) indicated that students who carried out the priming activities produced more target structures following prime sentences than they did in the absence of primes. In addition, students who did priming activities produced significantly more relative clauses and adverbial clauses overall than did students who carried out the activities without models, but there was no difference in their production of passives. Implications and suggestions for instructors interested in incorporating priming activities in L2 classrooms are discussed. DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.2023

http://bit.ly/cmlr711d





Book and Software Reviews / Critiques de livres et de logiciels



K. Arnett (2013). Languages for All : How to Support and Challenge Students in a Second-Language Classroom. reviewed by Marianne Cormier

Eve Haque (2012). Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework. reviewed by Mela Sarkar

Nigel Harwood (Ed.). (2014). English Language Teaching Textbooks. reviewed by Marti Sevier

DOI: 10.3138/cmlr.71.1.96

http://bit.ly/cmlr711r





Canadian Modern Language Review online at:

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