Analyzing which of the two groups has evolved more than the other after the trainings
enables us to get further insight into whether prosodic features can actually help learners
improve their production skills at the segmental level and not only at the suprasegmental
level, as is claimed in Birdsong (2003), for example. In fact, a close examination of the mean
evolution of each group clearly invalidates Hypothesis 4 #1, at least concerning read speech
capacities of French learners. The pre-training to post-training evolution of the segmental
group is stronger than that of the prosodic group. The former evinces a significant overall
evolution of +23.5%, whereas the latter only has an evolution of +8%.
According to the mean evolutions worked out from Judge 1’s scores, the gap between the
two groups is very pronounced. While Group A has increased by 29%, Group B has
decreased by 1.5%. This extreme case is completely at odds with our claims that a
suprasegmental training has a better effect on L2 learners’ production skills than a segmental
training, and that the group should have higher scores after the training.
The evolution calculated from the mean scores of Judge 2 also invalidates Hypothesis 4 #1,
even though the gap between Group A and Group B is here smaller. The increase by 27% of
the segmental group is in keeping with that of Judge 1, and it is evidence of an advantage
over the prosodic group and its 11.9% increase.
With Judge 3’s scores, the gap is even smaller, and the evolutions of the two groups are
very similar this time. The mean score of Group A has increased by 14.5%, and the score of
Group B, by 13.8%. On the one hand, the difference is inferior to 1%, and it seems that the
two groups have evolved in a similar way. On the other hand, the hypothesis is not
completely confirmed according to Judge 3, and it is the segmental group that evolved the
more after the trainings.