Investigating L1 lay assessments of L2 French pronunciation
This study examined how 10 English Canadian students reading a 122-word passage in French were assessed by a diverse group of 40
native speaker lay listeners in France, thus addressing a lacuna in current pronunciation research. Both stimulus factors and
listener effects were investigated. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed strong correlations between perceptions of
accentedness and comprehensibility, and between lay ratings and those made by two experts. Results highlighted the impact phonemic
errors and rate of speech have on rater judgments, while linkings (liaisons) and other prosodic elements seemed to play a minor
role. Recommendations are made for a follow-up study using a larger sample.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Previous studies
- 3.Method
- 3.1Speech samples
- 3.2Transcription of stimuli and coding of errors
- 3.3Native speaker participants
- 3.4Procedure
- 4.Analyses
- 5.Results
- 5.1Quantitative analyses
- 5.1.1Group of 40 lay listeners
- 5.1.2Lay vs Expert Assessments
- 5.1.3Stimulus features analyses
- 5.2Qualitative data
- 5.2.1Debriefing notes
- 5.2.2Free-style responses
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Research Question 1
- 6.2Research Question 2
- 6.3Limitations and recommendations for future research
- 6.4Pedagogical implications
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References
Derwing, T., & Munro, M.
(
1997)
Accent, intelligibility and comprehensibility: Evidence from four L1s.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 1–16.
Derwing, T., & Munro, M.
(
2005)
Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: A research-based approach.
TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 379–397.
Derwing, T., & Munro, M.
(
2009)
Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication.
Language Teaching, 42 (4), 476–490.
Drewelow, I., & Theobald, A.
(
2007)
A comparison of the attitudes of learners, instructors, and native French speakers about the pronunciation of French: An exploratory study.
Foreign Language Annals, 40(3), 491–520.
Ensz, K.
(
1982)
French attitudes toward typical speech errors of American speakers of French.
Modern Language Journal, 66(2), 133–139.
Harding, L.
(
2016)
What do raters need in a pronunciation scale? The user’s view. In
T. Isaacs &
P. Trofimovich (Eds.),
Second language pronunciation assessment (pp.12–36). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Hayes-Harb, R. & Hacking, J.
Hayes-Harb, R., & Watzinger-Tharp, J.
(
2012)
Accent, intelligibility, and the role of the listener: Perceptions of English-accented German by native German speakers.
Foreign Language Annals, 45(2), 260–282.
Huang, B.
(
2013)
The effects of accent familiarity and language teaching experience on raters’ judgments of non-native speech.
System, 411, 770–785.
Isaacs, T.
(
2014)
Assessing pronunciation. In
A. J. Kunyan (Ed.),
The companion to language assessment (pp. 140–155). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Isaacs, T., & Thomson, R.
(
2013)
Rater experience, rating scale length, and judgments of L2 pronunciation: Revisiting research conventions.
Language Assessment Quarterly, 101, 135–159.
Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P.
(
2012)
Deconstructing comprehensibility: Identifying the linguistic influences on listeners’ L2 comprehensibility ratings.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 341, 475–505.
Jun, H., & Li, J.
(
2010)
Factors in raters’ perceptions of comprehensibility and accentedness. In
J. Levis &
K. Levelle (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 1st Pronunciation and Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Iowa State University, Sept. 2009 (pp. 53–66). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Kennedy, S., & Trofimovich, P.
(
2008)
Intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness of L2 speech: The role of listener experience and semantic content.
Canadian Modern Language Review, 64(3), 459–489.
Kennedy, S., Guénette, D., Murphy, J., & Allard, S.
(
2015)
Le rôle de la prononciation dans l’intercompréhension entre locuteurs de français lingua franca.
La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 71(1), 1–25.
Lappin-Fortin, K., & Rye, B. J.
(
2014)
The use of pre-/posttest and self-assessment tools in a French pronunciation course.
Foreign Language Annals, 47(2), 300–320.
Levis, J.
(
2005)
Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation teaching.
TESOL Quarterly, 391, 369–377.
Lindemann, S., & Subtirelu, N.
(
2013)
Reliably biased: The role of listener expectations in the perception of second language speech.
Language Learning, 63(3), 567–594.
Munro, M., & Derwing, T.
(
1999)
Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners.
Language Learning, 49 (Suppl. 1), 285–310.
Munro, M., & Derwing, T. M.
(
2001)
Modeling perceptions of the accentedness and comprehensibility of L2 speech: The role of speaking rate.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 231, 451–468.
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T.
Munro, M., Derwing, T., & Morton, S.
(
2006)
The mutual intelligibility of L2 speech.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 28(1), 111–131.
Préfontaine, Y.
(
2013)
Perceptions of French fluency in second language speech production.
Canadian Modern Language Review, 69(3), 324–348.
Saito, K., Trofimovich, P., Isaacs, T., & Webb, S.
(
2016)
Re-examining phonological and lexical correlates of second language comprehensibility: The role of rater experience. In
T. Isaacs &
P. Trofimovich (Eds.),
Second Language Pronunciation Assessment (pp. 141–156). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Sturm, J.
(
2013)
Explicit phonetics instruction in L2 French: A global analysis of improvement.
System 411, 654–662.
Trofimovich, P., & Isaacs, T.
(
2012)
Disentangling accent from comprehensibility.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(4), 905–916.
Vieru, B., Boula de Mareüil, P., & Adda-Decker, M.
(
2011)
Characterisation and identification of non-native French accents.
Speech Communication, 531, 292–310.
Winke, P., Gass, S., & Myford, C.
(
2012)
Raters’ L2 background as a potential source of bias in rating oral performance.
Language Testing, 30(2), 231–252
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Huensch, Amanda
2019.
The pronunciation teaching practices of university‐level graduate teaching assistants of French and Spanish introductory language courses.
Foreign Language Annals 52:1
► pp. 13 ff.
Sturm, Jessica L.
2019.
Current approaches to pronunciation instruction: A longitudinal case study in French.
Foreign Language Annals 52:1
► pp. 32 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.