When commencing the compulsory education curriculum, pupils are five years old and are assumed to have mastered the oral foundations of the language of instruction. In some districts however, up to 80% of pupils entering 1H speak a different language at home, and between 60 and 70% do not speak or understand French at all. The processes whereby so-called “allophone” students, even if many of them were born in Switzerland, acquire phonological representations of French (i.e. the sounds of language), have not been widely studied and are therefore addressed in this project.
The “Sounds of the Language of Instruction” project encompasses two secondary studies looking at two important stages in the success of a pupil’s schooling: oral language proficiency and the acquisition of reading skills. Firstly, it aims to provide a better understanding of the ways in which allophone students acquire oral French at school. Secondly, it seeks to assess the efficacy of speech synthesis in overcoming difficulties in written comprehension caused by a limited knowledge of oral French and to evaluate the links between written and oral language use. This project has received support from the Centenary Fund, the Institute of Plurilingualism, the University and Fribourg HEP, in order to conduct pilots for each of the two secondary studies. These pilots will take place in 2022 and may or may not be developed further.
Study 1: "The Sounds of French: The Challenges of the First Hours"
We intend to assess the speed and characteristics of the process of phonological acquisition and to observe the communication strategies applied by five-year-old allophone pupils as they enter compulsory education. The processes of phonological acquisition and interaction have not yet been studied in the context of French as a second language in compulsory education settings.
In the current state of knowledge we do not know if phonological representations are acquired in similar ways to those used by monolingual French-speaking children (McLeod, Sutton, Trudeau & Thordardottir 2011). Studies carried out with small numbers of students (n=2) learning French at a French-speaking school in Sweden (Splendido, 2014) seem to show that this would be the case, at least in the context of highly targeted linguistic phenomena. This study intends not only to increase the number of participants and the number of phenomena under observation, but also to provide a better understanding of the link between phonological and lexical acquisition. To achieve this, spoken words will be analysed at the phonemic level in terms of their collocation and use context. This detailed analysis will be supplemented by an analysis of the verbal interactions taking place.
Verbal interactions occurring at school, both during teaching time and during informal moments (recreation, class life…) will be analysed in order to determine which languages are used by allophone students. Which students initiate the verbal interactions they experience? How many interactions do they experience in a morning at school? Which vocabularies are students using? No data are currently available in the literature in this regard.
In an attempt to answer these questions, the oral productions of ten 5H students will be recorded continuously during school hours for a morning or an afternoon, on two separate days spaced six weeks apart. The study could be extended over a period of 3 years to better observe the links between phonological acquisition and reading.
Study 2: “The Efficacy of Speech Synthesis in Facilitating Reading Comprehension"
After four semesters of learning in French, allophone students continue their education without always being able to rely on a functional level of oral French. Both bilingual and allophone speakers tend to have more limited ranges of vocabulary (Bonvin, Vanhove, Berthele, Lambelet 2018). Moreover, an often incomplete acquisition of the phonological representations of French further limits their ability to understand that which they manage to decode from written texts. The meta-analysis conducted by Jeon and Yamashita (2014) reveals that the main linguistic difficulties in second languages are syntax, vocabulary and decoding. However, these three linguistic skills, all essential to the written comprehension process, can be enhanced through the use of speech synthesis.
Study 2 seeks to determine whether access to the sounds of written words through speech synthesis techniques can facilitate written comprehension and the learning of French as the language of instruction. Two sets of data will be collected for this purpose. Firstly, reading-comprehension performance will be assessed in repeated tests both with (twice) and without (once) the help of speech synthesis, using 3 texts of equivalent levels in terms of lexical diversity, readability and syntactic complexity. The participants will be students (n=18) from class 5H in the compulsory education system, considered to be heterogeneous in that 80% of them speak at least one language other than French at home. Secondly, a collaborative research study will be undertaken involving eight students, two FLS teachers and T. Geoffre’s research unit (HEP|PH FR) over a period of six months. This will seek to identify educational actions involving the use of speech synthesis which are most likely to facilitate the development of written comprehension, as well as learning in other disciplines (mathematics, science, etc.).
References
- Bonvin, A., Vanhove, J., Berthele, R. & Lambelet, A. (2018). Le développement final de compétences lexicales productives compétences lexicales chez les élèves issus de l'immigration portugaise en Suisse. Revue pour Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht 23 : 1, 135-148. http://tujournals.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php/zif/.
- Jeon, E.H. & Yamashita, J. (2014), L2 Reading Comprehension and Its Correlates: A Meta-Analysis. Language Learning, 64: 160-212. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12034
- Macleod, A., Sutton, A., Trudeau, N. & Thordardottir, E. (2011). The acquisition of consonants in Québécois French: A cross-sectional study of pre-school aged children. International journal of speech-language pathology, 13(2), 93-109.
- Splendido, F. (2014). Le développement d'aspects phonético-phonologiques du français chez des enfants bilingues simultanés et successifs : Le VOT et la liaison dans une étude de cas multiples. Doctoral Thesis. Lund University (Sweden).
- Wood, S.G., Moxley, J.H., Tighe, E.L., Wagner, R.K. (2018). Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students With Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis. J Learn Disabil. 51(1), 73-84. doi: 10.1177/0022219416688170
The information collected in Study 1, “The Sounds of French: The Challenges of the First Hours" could provide a better understanding of the cadences, the stages and the processes associated with the acquisition of oral language. This knowledge could help further the development of didactic and educational materials which are more likely to meet the needs of allophone students and accelerate their transitions to reading.
Reading is a skill which must be mastered if the normal school curriculum is to be followed, but its acquisition is hindered when oral language has not yet been mastered. Study 2, “The Efficacy of Speech Synthesis in Facilitating Reading Comprehension", is intended to provide information about the ability of speech synthesis to help learners overcome reading/comprehension difficulties when their oral language is not yet sufficiently developed. The long-term effects of its use will have to be measured to determine whether it can help learners cope with the teaching methods commonly used in ordinary inclusive classrooms.