Methodological Perspective on Second Language Prosody (original) (raw)

The stress-timed vs. syllable-timed dichotomy between English and other languages (e.g. French), is at the origin of a major challenge for teachers and students of English L2 alike. Lexical stress-not a free parameter in English words-plays a fundamental role in the intelligibility of the message. As the rhythmic, basic beatbearer of the utterance, its absence or misplacement can dramatically impair interaction with a native speaker. The experimentation described in this paper is based on an original pedagogical approach targeted at the acquisition of rhythm, using a metronome frequently during oral production tasks in class. An identical test was used, before and after the work with the metronome, enabling the measurement and analysis of progressrelated data. The productions of 75 students were recorded during the test, so as to build a corpus. A preliminary single case study is related here. Using PRAAT software, measures were made and the collected data analyzed in order to determine whether there was progress. First results show definite progress in some parameters (vowel duration, pitch) and stagnation in others (intensity, vowel quality). This preliminary study paves the way to a future broader study based on part, or all, of the recorded corpus.