A foreign accent modeling activity based on learner-led contrastive analysis: L1-as-pedagogy in action

Abstract

Increasing demand for multilingual, transcultural, inclusiveand transformative foreign and second language (L2) education forces us to rethink the use of different activities, involving students’ mother tongue (L1) in L2 classrooms, including activities based on Contrastive Analysis. This article introduces a foreign accent modeling activity based on learner-led phonetological (phonetic-phonological) contrastive analysis integrated into task-based L2 pedagogy as an instructional strategy to reinforce learners’ phonological awareness and increase their self-esteem as bilingual persons by capitalizing on their expertise in L1 and L2. We present theoretical, pedagogical and linguistic rationales of the accent modeling activity, and discuss its design and implementation, based on the example of teaching Russian to French-speaking learners at low levels of proficiency. We close with a discussion of the foreign accent modeling activity as an example of L1-as-pedagogy, which reviews the principles of contrastive teachingin the light of approaches to bilingual L2 learner’s and teacher’s identityfrom poststructuralist applied linguistics

Keywords

• explicit teaching Russian L2 phonetics, bilingual L2 learner’s and teacher’s identity, cognitive turn of contrastive analysis, contrastive teaching, foreign accent, foreign accent modeling, L1-as-pedagogy, learner-led phonetological contrastive analysis, learner as constructivist, poststructuralist applied linguistics, task-based language teaching