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Part of
Child Bilingualism and Second Language Learning: Multidisciplinary perspectives
Edited by Fangfang Li, Karen E. Pollock and Robbin Gibb
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 10] 2020
► pp. 167–188

Chapter 9
Speech perception in French immersion students in Western Canada

| University of Lethbridge
| University of Lethbridge

The present study reports on stop consonant perception of voice onset time (VOT) in Anglophone children enrolled in a French immersion (FI) elementary school in Western Canada. Fifty-seven children in grades 1, 3, and 5 were tested in both English and French for the three pairs of stops (/p/-/b/, /t/-/d/, and /k/-/g/). They were asked to identify words that begin with these stop consonants when listening to the audio prompts. We found that FI students’ French perception exhibits language-appropriate VOT boundaries for all three pairs but they have difficulty with identifying French voiced stops. Children’s French perception remains constant across grades. Our findings highlight the role played by educational context and the social status of L2 in second language learning.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Methods
    • Task and procedure
    • Statistical analysis
  • Results
    • 1.The effect of experience on French learning
    • 2.The interaction between English and French
    • 3.The effect of L2 on L1
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.10.09li
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