This study analyses the production of French /y/ and /u/ by 42 native English learners of French (ELoF) at the start and end of a Residence Abroad (RA) in a French-speaking country. As an approximation of both phonological and phonetic development, categorical change is teased apart from gradient change using k-medoid clustering of acoustic data…

Despite the fact that pronunciation is a vital aspect of language learning, previous research has shown that its instruction is limited in the classroom in terms of time and attention, due in part to the time constraints inherent in any curriculum. It then becomes essential for instructors to be strategic about the pronunciation features they…

In this study, the authors compare the production of internal codas and branching onsets in four groups of children learning French: monolingual typically-developing children (n = 12), bilingual typically-developing children (n = 61), monolingual children with Specific Language Impairment (n = 17) and bilingual children with Specific Language…

Previous studies have yielded contradictory results on the relationship between perception and production in second language (L2) phonological processing. We re-examine the relationship between the two modalities both within and across processing levels, addressing several issues regarding methodology and statistical analyses. We focus on the…

This article explores the role of transfer and Universal Grammar (UG) in second language (L2) phonology by investigating the L2 acquisition of stress/prominence in footless languages, such as Turkish and French, which have fixed word- and phrase-final prominence respectively. It is proposed that once the prosodic constituent Foot is projected in a…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should…

This aim of this article is to contribute to the development of a socio-cultural model of emergent biliteracy that recognizes the dynamic interactions amongst two languages. The present field study took place in a French-German public Kindergarten class in Alsace, France, where students are in the initial process of learning to read in both…

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the…

Infants have remarkable abilities to learn several languages. However, phonological acquisition in bilingual infants appears to vary depending on the phonetic similarities or differences of their two native languages. Many studies suggest that learning contrasts with different realizations in the two languages (e.g., the /p/, /t/, /k/ stops have…

Background: The awareness of the formal structure of language has been widely studied in the literature but less in a bilingualism context. Even less with second-language learners (SLL) who are acquiring their second language (L2) and are not considered as bilinguals. Aims: This study aimed at providing an investigation of young SLL's skills in…

French learners at university meet difficulties in the comprehension of oral English. Being in a formal context of language learning, they need to develop language awareness to compensate for insufficient exposure to the English language. To meet the students' needs, data was collected in order to pinpoint the main errors made by French learners…

The past 20 years have witnessed enormous growth in a diverse array of studies which explore the linguistic impact of study abroad (SA) experiences. During this period a multitude of research projects have investigated SLA/L2 learning in SA, in a number of different languages (Russian, Japanese, French, Spanish, English), utilizing diverse…

In examining reading comprehension in a second language (L2), I have demonstrated that the prevailing metaphor of transfer of skills is misleading, and that what happens is access to an already existing general cognitive skill. There is evidence in first language (L1) and in L2 that accessing this skill when reading in an alphabetic language…

Examines the problem posed for French second-language learners by the irregular dropping of French final consonants, examining the rules presented in textbooks and comparing them with findings of various linguistic surveys conducted in France and Canada. Differences observed between theory and reality lead to practical advice for French teachers.…

Papers from the Proceedings of the 17th meeting of the AIMAV (Association internationale pour le developpement de la communication interculturelle) are collected in this volume. Conference papers appear either in English, in French, or in Russian. For purposes of this abstract, all titles below have been translated into English. The…