The ten French-speaking volunteers were divided into two groups of five (see Appendix B),
each consisting of three female French speakers and two male French speakers in order to
avoid inequality. Group A – from Subject 1 to Subject 5 – was the segment-based group, and
Group B – from Subject 6 to Subject 10 – was the prosody-based one. In Group A, the average
age of the subjects was 19.8 years; their length of study of English was comprised between 8
and 13 years, with an overall mean length of 10 years. In Group B, the average age was 20.6
years – i.e. less than one year of difference with Group A –, and their length of study of
English varied from 9 to 13 years; the mean length was 10.8 years.