First and foremost, it should be reminded that the rating task was blind, and the pre-training
and post-training recordings were completely randomized before being given to the listenerjudges.
In order to investigate the importance of prosody with respect to segments in EFL
acquisition, we should now consider how the French subjects’ production skills evolved from
before the trainings to after the trainings according to the listeners. An independent
comparison of the pre-training scores with the post-training scores within each group will be
carried out so as to determine whether the trainings have helped the learners improve their
read production capacities (Appendix E contains all the results in detail), and by extension, if
French learners are able to understand and apply what is taught to them. Furthermore, if a
prosodic training has a better effect on learners’ pronunciation skills than a segmental
training, as we have claimed so far, then the prosodic group should evince a stronger
evolution. The within-groups design will serve to find out whether or not the evolution
within Group A is similar to the evolution within Group B.
Hypothesis 3
Given that the ten French-speaking participants were neither specialists of English nor
bilinguals, and had never studied English phonetics and phonology before the experiment
took place, their pre-training scores should be lower than their post-training scores, no
matter which training they attended. Through the within-groups analysis and the calculation
of the evolution of each group independently, we hypothesize that the subjects of Group A
will have obtained better scores after their training (Hypothesis 3 #1), and so will the
speakers of Group B (Hypothesis 3 #2).
Hypothesis 4
From the answer to Hypothesis 3 and the examination of the within-groups evolutions, it
will be possible to compare the overall pre-training to post-training evolution of Group A
with that of Group B. In keeping with Hypothesis 1, our claim is that the segmental group
will have evolved less than the suprasegmental group, since we believe L2 prosodic features
to have more weight in intelligibility and the development of learners’ pronunciation
capacities (Hypothesis 4 #1). However, given the unexpected findings of the previous section
(4.1.), we must not preclude the option that the pronunciation capacities of both groups will
have evolved in a similar measure.
In addition (Hypothesis 4 #2), we hypothesize that the evolution of Group B for phrases
will be higher than that of Group A, as the prosodic training focused on the whole phrase. As
for the evolution for isolated words, two possibilities can be envisaged: (a) Group A will
show a stronger evolution for word reading, since the segmental training was based on
words; (b) the evolution of Group B for words will be higher than, or at least the same as,
Group A, which would mean that a training in L2 prosody helps learners improve their
pronunciation skills at the segmental level, as well. In the latter case, the hypothesis that was
put forward by Birdsong (2003) about the link between L2 suprasegmental features and L2
segmental features in production would be validated.