In:Approaches and Methods in French Second Language Acquisition Research:
Edited by Martin Howard
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 9] 2025
► pp. 44–69
Chapter 3Methodological consideration in research on French second-language speech perception and spoken word
recognition
Published online: 3 March 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.9.03tre
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.9.03tre
Abstract
The present chapter provides an overview of methodological considerations for research on French
speech perception and spoken word recognition by second/foreign language (L2) learners. French has several phonetic
and phonological characteristics that are relatively infrequent cross-linguistically and thus make it a very
interesting L2 to investigate from the perspective of speech perception
and spoken word recognition. The chapter provides a review of the methodological approaches used in studies that focus
on these characteristics, considering both the perception and processing of speech sounds that are lexically
contrastive and the perception and processing of speech sounds that signal word boundaries. The chapter also
identifies areas for further investigation and open research questions, and it makes theoretical and methodological
recommendations that take advantage of the unique properties of French speech for further advancing research on L2
learners’ speech perception and spoken word recognition.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Methodological approaches
- Tasks targeting the perception of lexically contrastive French sounds
- Tasks targeting the segmentation of French speech
- L2 learner characteristics: French proficiency and L1
- French characteristics: Dialectal considerations
- Evaluation of tasks
- Future research
- Conclusion
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