Given that Group A received a training at the phoneme-level and the word-level, the
participants of this group should have better scores at individual words than those in Group
B, who received a training that was more centred on the whole phrase. Yet, if Birdsong’s
(2003) claim about the link between prosody and segmentals is true, then one should not
dismiss the idea that the prosodic training has helped the learners improve their
pronunciation at the segmental level, as well. In that case, Group B may have higher scores
than Group A.
As a matter of fact, just like the general post-training scores, neither group was better
evaluated than the other for the reading of isolated words. Table 2 below shows the mean
scores of the groups as given by each judge for the words only:
Table 2: Post-training scores for words
For Judge 1, the two groups have similar levels regarding the read production of words.
The slight advantage of Group B – 3.08 – over Group A – 3.04 – is of no great significance, as
the gap is only 0.04. However slight the advantage of Group B over Group A may be, it
actually runs counter to the hypothesis that the segmental group would be better at words
than the suprasegmental group. A little tendency towards the opposite can be observed,
pointing to the other possibility that prosodic training may improve the learner’s
pronunciation at the segmental level.
On the contrary, an examination of Judge 2’s mean scores confirms the claim that the
segmental group should have better scores for words than the suprasegmental group. The
difference between the two is superior to 0.30, i.e. 0.34, with 4.60 out of 7 for Group A, and
4.26 for Group B. It must be borne in mind that such a difference is small all the same.
Judge 3’s mean scores for words are close to Judge 1’s, in so far as Group B is slightly
above Group A, with 3.46 and 3.42 respectively. Once again, the difference of 0.04 is nonsignificant,
even though it points to the invalidation of the hypothesis that Group A should
obtain better scores for words. However, the hypothesis that a prosodic training prevents
segmental errors is not safely validated, either.
On the whole, it cannot be said that Hypothesis 2 #1 is confirmed. The mean score of
Group A is 3.68, which is more than Group B’s 3.60, but still insufficient to draw safe
conclusions and generalize. In other words, neither a segmental training, nor a
suprasegmental training has a better impact on French EFL learners’ production of isolated
words than the other.