'Het effect van immersie op uitspraakvaardigheid' : de uitspraak van de medeklinkercombinaties sch(r) en ng door immersie- en niet-immersieleerlingen in het Franstalig secundair onderwijs

Details

Supervisors

Hiligsmann, Philippe

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité didactique

Abstract

enDespite the fact that immersion learners acquire a better functional command of the second language, their productive skills and, among others, their pronunciation skills are not always sufficiently accurate (Beheydt, 2008). When speaking in Dutch, they tend to cling to the characteristics of their mother tongue (Anderson, 2004). The consonant combinations sch(r) and ng are defined as difficult to pronounce for French learners of Dutch, in particular because they contain the phonemes /x/ and /ŋ/ which are absent from the French phoneme inventory (Hiligsmann & Rasier, 2007). This thesis examines to what extent French-speaking pupils from immersion and regular education master the pronunciation of these two consonant combinations. A number of factors that can influence pronunciation are taken into account. More specifically, the following factors were included: (1) influence of the mother tongue, (2) type of consonant combination, (3) number of syllables per word containing the consonant combination sch(r) or ng, (4) cluster position. The expectations were that the sch(r) would be pronounced as *[skr-] and the ng as *[-ŋk] at the end of the word and *[-ŋɣ-] in the middle of the word due to the influence of the mother tongue and that the immersion learners would score better than the non-immersion learners. Another expectation was that there would be no difference in pronunciation difficulties between the two clusters. The final expectation was that as the number of syllables per word containing a consonant combination increases, the pronunciation of the cluster becomes more difficult. Two data sets were analysed. The first did not allow for a reliable comparison between the pupils of the two groups. In the second data set, an experiment was conducted in which immersion and non-immersion pupils from the sixth grade were asked to pronounce 16 sentences. This experiment showed certain trends. The immersion learners scored higher in both combinations. However, both groups had lower scores for the ng cluster. It could not be shown that the number of syllables affects the pronunciation of the combinations. On the other hand, it was found that the pupils who pronounced ng incorrectly pronounced it *[ŋɡ] in most cases and for both positions (middle word and end word). Further research is needed to establish significant differences between both learner groups.