News

• Feb 2022:
  • the exercises are now packaged as a Praat plug-in (+ software installer for Windows)
  • the current version of our exercises includes both British and American English (previously only British)
• 19 Nov 2021: conference presentation
• 11 Jun 2021: the students who participated in the first phase of the project were asked to fill in a questionnaire; the results are available here (document in French)

Quick facts

• “Pedagogical innovation” project funded by [Idex Université de Paris] (https://u-paris.fr/idex-universite-paris/)
• Years: 2021-2022
• Core Team : Emmanuel Ferragne, Anne Guyot-Talbot, Sylvain Navarro
• Other members : Hanane Amrane, Nada Azizi, Hannah King, Alice Léger, Francesca Sanvicente

Summary

Many studies have shown that speaking English with a foreign accent has a negative impact on speakers’ credibility and therefore on their professional opportunities. Throughout our various research projects on the acquisition of English phonology by French learners, we have developed intensive training applications which not only allow learners to improve their perception of a number of English phonological distinctions but also strengthen their ability to produce those distinctions. These training applications are based on innovative interfaces which notably involve visual feedback through real-time acoustic comparison of a learner’s voice with that of a native speaker. The SEPALE project will make these interfaces available to all of our students so that they can train from home. The ergonomics of the interfaces will be improved in accordance with the feedback we gather from questionnaires filled out by the users. We will then expand these interfaces to include other pronunciation difficulties as well as American English. The final versions of these new interactive training tools will eventually be offered to all students, faculty and staff of the University of Paris.

Pour plus d’informations, n’hésitez pas à [m’envoyer un message](mailto:emmanuel.ferragne@u-paris.fr?subject=projet SEPALE).