Magie des sons et de la prosodie, et apprentissage de la phonétique par la poésie : « Le Pont Mirabeau »

Abstract

In this article we present an experiment related to the teaching/learning of phonetics, in which Greek-speaking Cypriot B2-C1 students enrolled in a Master’s degree in didactics of French as a foreign language (FFL) were involved. This experiment was centered on a literary text, the poem by Guillaume Apollinaire « Le Pont Mirabeau », and was intended to make participants aware of the importance of teaching phonetics in their future FFL classes and of the attractiveness that acquiring knowledge in this domain of language may present. The procedure of the research project consisted of five stages: 1) Preliminary reading of the poem by the participants (pre-test); 2) Phonetics course (collective teaching) and feed-back on the preliminary reading (individual teaching); 3) Second reading of the poem by the participants (post-test); 4) Phonetic analysis of the two readings; 5) Semi-directed interviews between researchers and participants. We conclude with a general evaluation of the experiment.

Keywords

• phonetics and poetry
• French prosodic features
• French vocalic features
• phono-semantic relations
• advanced Greek-speaking students