The purpose of the Libra lesson is to assist students in the double task of learning the pronunciation of French vowels and mastering the skills of phonetic transcription. Designed as a stand-alone tutorial for use in the language laboratory, this lesson frees the teacher from tedious repetition of the basic sounds of the language. Class time can then be dedicated to studying rhythm and intonation.
The first part of the lesson is a study of oral and nasal French vowels using the IpakielSeven font for phonetic symbols. Inspiration for this part of the lesson comes fromYour Guide to French Pronunciation (Bras 1995), unfortunatly now out of print. The writer of this article has used methods expounded by Bras for many years and feels that the computer does justice to its clarity and simplicity. Fig.7.2 shows the basic organizing display for students' use of the lesson.
This display presents a table in the form of a triangle representing the different points of articulations of the vowels. For students, visualization of such concepts becomes the first step towards problem solving of such a classification. Each phoneme corresponds to a card in the lesson describing the location of the production of sounds, such as point of articulation and degree of aperture (see fig.7.3)
Demonstrations and explanations previously given in class help guide students in determining why a vowel can be "orale" (oral) or "nasale"(nasal); "fermée" (high) "demi-fermé" (mid-high), "demi-ouverte (low-mid) or "ouverte" (low); "antérieure" (front) "postérieure" (back); "arrondie" (round) or "écartée"(spread). The main purpose of the lesson in the laboratory setting is to give students the opportunity to practice each of the individual sounds they studied in class. Each icon-button displays a word or a phrase which is linked to a sound file that plays that word or phrase. The interactivity of the computer allows students to adjust the use of the lesson to their own learning rate and style. The recording of students' voice has not yet been included in this tutorial. However, if speech recognition technology were added to the program, students could record the exercises themselves and compare their speech patterns to those of the master's voice.
This kind of exercise tests students' ability to distinguish between sounds in groups of two sounds. By means of LIBRA's icon-sorting questions format, students compare phonemes and contrast them in sample words. Each icon-button displays a short word and is linked to a sound file that plays that word. Students complete the exercise by moving the icon-buttons into the appropriate locations.
Students can read and listen to every word of the exercise for sounds as in "mie" (crumb), "vu" (seen), "vous" (you), "me" (me), "les" (the), "lait" (milk), "beau" (beautiful), "robe" (dress), "feu" (fire), "peur" (fear), "va" (goes), "tâche" (task), "un" (a), "bon" (good), "vin" (wine), "blanc" (white).
Listening comprehension exercise:"Qu'est-ce qui vous met en colère?"
To illustrate the previous lesson and provide material for phonetic transcription, a ten-minute video segment was selected from PICS Preview Disc (PICS 1990). This segment portrays 12 people engaged in conversations in the street of a small town in Brittany. Each of them has been asked: "Qu'est-ce qui vous met en colère?" ("What makes you angry?) Each answer offers different examples of French colloquialisms as well as a glimpse of the French working class. (see fig.7.6).
The first display presents icon-buttons representing the faces of the 12 people grouped by age and gender. By clicking on each button, students access individual answers with the option of listening with or without transcription. Each answer reveals a world of information about the socio-economic background of each character and a view of the personality of each individual. For example, "Le jeune à la moto"(the young man on his motorbike), a shallow young man whose world revolves around his motorbike, says "Ben, quand j'tomb en moto" (Well, it's whenever I fall off my bike"); "La mémée étourdie" (the absent-minded granny), a sweet little old lady whose main problem seems to be her forgetfulness offers a long answer whose very length discloses her confusion. "L'optimiste"(an optimistic lady) is a woman full of pep and enthusiasm who says "Je n'me mets jamais en colère, la vie est tellement belle!"(I am never bothered by anything, life is too beautiful!); and "Le petit garçon" (the little boy), a shy little boy whose answer reveals that he is persecuted by his classmates, "Quand y- en a qui m'attaquent à l'école" ("when I get bullied at school")
(Fig.7 and 8 show typical listening comprehension questions for this part of the lesson. These questions in figs.7 and 8 are designed to help students understand the text and context of the authentic video
The ultimate goal of the listening comprehension part of the lesson is to give students the opportunity to make phonetic transcription of authentic sources material. All the answers are spontaneous, and offer a quality of speech unmatched in the classroom. They give students a chance to hear genuine illustrations of speech patterns used by the French working class. Students can then compare the characteristics of these patterns with the literal French of their middle class instructors. Indeed, in class all phonemes and morphemes are carefully pronounced, whereas street French is mumbled, distorted, and hard for American students to understand. Making a phonetic transcription of these street dialogues further documents the discrepancy between written and spoken French. Students have to capture not only the pronunciation of French words but also the essence of the cultural and socio-economic context of the French people. The incidental learning which occurs during this part of the lesson adds to the merit of the learning-by-doing method. Virtually transported to the streets of a small town in Brittany, students can practice phonetic transcription under ideal conditions, because the computer enables them to replay the segments as often as they wish until they are able to hear and transcribe these sounds in phonetic symbols.
However, although the computer provides phonetic fonts, it is not worth the effort of learning the intricacy involved in using the keyboard to access the appropriate keys in the PAKielSeven font. Students still prefer to do their phonetic transcription in the old fashioned way on paper, which is corrected in the same fashion by the instructor.
The design of the Libra authoring system is ingenious and logical. After the initial week of learning in a Libra workshop, it took me three months, single handedly, to design and develop the application. Although I am currently using the software in the course it is still in its testing phase. Future plans include adding more exercises in the form of texts in prose and poetry, and expanding the videodisk selection.
The program has been successful and students have enjoyed it. Using video segments rather than audio tapes has marked a tangible methodological progress. Amused by the material, students take in stride the challenge of making phonetic transcriptions out of these wonderfully alive, although often garbled sentences. Such relevant exercises truly prepare them for trips to Francophone countries since most students in this class plan to spend their Junior Year abroad. Phonetic transcription becomes a means to manipulate authentic material, master the skill of pronunciation, and gain, on a one-to-one basis, access to the domain of phonetics which at first might seem vague, elusive and abstract.
Monique Bras, Your Guide to French Pronunciation, Larousse , 1975.
Schank, Roger C. and Menachem Y. Jona. "Empowering the Student: New Perspectives on the Design of Teaching Systems." The Journal of Learning Sciences, volume 1 no. 1, 1991. Lawrence Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ.
Nicole Vaget (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts) is Professor of French at Mount Holyoke College. She has received grants in the area of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and has pioneered technology advancement in the Western Massachusetts Five College area. She has developed applications in French civilization: "Religious Medieval Art" in Hypercard, "Renaissance Castles of the Loire Valley" in Supercard, and "The Virtual World of French Peasants" in Authoreware. She is a member of Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO), the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), the International Council of Francophone Studies (CIEF), the French Colonial Historical Society (FCHS), and the Canadian Society for 18th-Century Studies (CSECS). She is the author of "Le Chevalier de Boufflers et son temps,étude d'un échec", Paris, Nizet, 1976; "Saint Jean d'Arvey en Savoi" (1998); and the editor of "Poèmes pour mon village", Cranves Salles (1982) and "Franco-American View Points", Northampton (1988)