This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French "aspirateur," Catalan "aspirador"…

Though research has shown that rhythmic training is beneficial for phonological speech processing, little empirical work has been carried out to assess whether rhythmic training in the classroom can help to improve pronunciation in a second language. This study tests the potential benefits of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French…

Paper read at the Congress for the Oral Education of the Deaf, Northampton, England, in June 1967. (DS)

In 2004, in response to the need to revise oral practice and assessment in the second semester of Beginners French at Monash University, an eight-week group-based theatre project was developed and trialled. A specially adapted version of Tardieu's absurdist play "Le Guichet" was used to give students the opportunity to focus on oral…

A speech visualizer which provides a student with an immediate reinforcement in the form of a visual "feedback" of his own performance is vastly superior to other methods of teaching prosodic elements of speech in a second language, according to experiments carried out at the University of Toronto. (CFM)

Students of French learn to pronounce the syllables of the same rhythmic group with the same stress and the same intonation while lengthening slightly only the last syllable uttered. Several techniques designed to help students acquire correct French rhythm patterns are described here. They include: (1) counting aloud, (2) syllable division, (3)…

Twenty chapters of commentary on the filmed poetry recitation of Pierre Viala concentrate on developing insight into the cultural and social background of French language and literature. Suggestions for teaching the poems are followed by discussion of possible elements of a plan for teaching a poem and remarks about a "backward build-up" technique…

Describes a one-semester conversational course taught at Harvard University designed to teach basic oral communication skills in French with the main emphasis on teaching students to pause while speaking. (AM)

A study was conducted to determine the extent to which listening comprehension is impaired when students are confronted with the colloquial use of French, as opposed to its formal use. It was found that amoung 128 prospective French teachers who participated in the study, there existed a low comprehension level of colloquial French, a discrepancy…