Identification and treatment of fossilizable errors in the pronunciation of French by teachers in training

Abstract

This work is carried out to identify and analyze the most recurrent phonetic deficiencies that students and future professors of the Foreign Languages program of the Universidad del Atlántico perform when communicating in French. In addition, it is intended to identify the possible reasons for these frequent errors in the speech of undergraduates, even in advanced semesters and also graduates. Once identified, it is planned to create a mechanism that allows the handling of these errors. In addition, these results will be shared with the professors of the French department to make them aware of this issue and begin to generate changes for future generations of graduates. This population was subjected to different stages: observation, carrying out activities to identify phonemes with a tendency to fossilize, a questionnaire that seeks that they themselves give their point of view on what are their biggest gaps in the pronunciation of French, the application of the method corrective for the same and, finally, a final evaluation to identify if there are any improvement. Most of the errors are the differentiation between the phonemes / b / - / v /, / s / - / z / and the correct pronunciation of the nasal vowels / ã / - / ɛ / - / ɔ ̃ ̃ /. On the other hand, deficiencies were observed in the correct use of the liaison. Likewise, 50% of the students confirm that these errors are due to the lack of teaching of phonetics in the Foreign Languages program of the Universidad del Atlántico. It is concluded that phonetics is a branch of the language that must be taught to improve the pronunciation of foreign language students and some interactive cards are shared with teachers so that their students can work on these phonemes from the first semesters, thus avoiding future fossilizations.