Handbooks of French phonetics disagree with the findings of phonetic research. Discussed are: differentiating between teaching pronunciation and auditory perception: the difference between acoustic and semantic hearing; and the importance of nasal regressive and progressive assimilation in contemporary spoken French. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Described in this speech are eight types of auditory discrimination commonly encountered by English speakers in French phonemes and word groups. Representative exercises, designed specifically for the teaching of French to English-speaking students, are provided for each variety presented. (CW)

This article is one among a series of studies on the acquisition of patterns of linguistic variation observable in the speech of native speakers of Canadian French by French immersion (FI) students. The present study is centered on deletion of the central vowel schwa, a widespread feature of casual spoken French. In this study, FI students are…

The goal of this study is to discover the phonetic difficulties encountered in the acquisition of French as a second language by English-speaking children. The children are studying French in a total immersion situation without benefit of structural exercises or special French language laboratory classes. Of particular interest here is the extent…

This is the first in a series of articles on general phonetic characteristics of American English. Language research techniques of spectrographic analysis, spectrographic synthesis, articulatory motion-picture study, and statistical calculation are briefly described. Thirty-five areas of phonetic difference for comparison of English to Spanish,…

An experiment exploring the use of a single phonological variable in standard French by advanced American speakers of French who teach beginning college-level French classes is reported. Seven graduate instructors' use of the variable was examined in directed interviews with a native speaker and in the reading of sentences containing instances of…

A knowledge of areas of difficulty as well as their underlying causes is necessary before instructional materials, teaching techniques, and evaluation methods in foreign language instruction can be organized. This research describes three methods of analyzing the problems in foreign language learning and suggests their complementary role in…

This study conducted at the University of Kentucky in 1967-68 tests the theory of interaction between discrimination and pronunciation through a field test. After a brief review of previous research in phonemic discrimination as related to foreign language learning, the procedures and results of the test are presented. The text used was "Basic…