French Pronunciation Learning and Computer-Mediated Visual Feedback

First-semester French students (n =34) recorded their pronunciation of 29 French words and sentences. Recordings were made either with or without visual pronunciation feedback. Subjects in the audio condition heard and repeated target words and sentences modeled by male and female French native speakers; students were instructed to listen to their own production and correct it by approximating native speaker pronunciation. Subjects in the audio-visual condition additionally received visual acoustic information pertaining to vowel formant trajectories: students were instructed that formant trajectories correlated with degree of mouth aperture (F1), tongue frontness/backness (F2), and lip rounding (F3). Subjects also completed a questionnaire to determine their preferred mode (i.e., visual, auditory, and/or tactile) of material presentation. The recordings from both conditions were presented to French native speaker raters for assessment. It was found that the subjects in the audio-visual condition did benefit from two sources of feedback, as they significantly outperformed the subjects in the audio condition on pronunciation improvement of practiced items. Results did not permit drawing any firm conclusion as to which sounds are easier to learn. Finally, the factors of perceptual learning style and feedback type did not interact as the experiment was construed, but it is suggested that they might, provided the audio feedback is accompanied by further instructions as to how to correctly configure one's articulators for production.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Ruellot, Viviane Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Golato, Peter

• Education, Language and Literature

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3223704

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86274