Article Review

Second Language Acquisition of Phonology

Summer 2004

Due:06/07/2004, in class.

Write a critical review of the following article on Second Language Acquisition of Phonology.

D. LaCharité & P. Prévost. 1999. The role of L1 and of teaching in the acquisition of English sounds by Francophones. In: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press, pp.373–385.

(available in the Semesterapparat)

Format: at least 7 pages (excluding the references and any tables or figures you might want to use), typed, double-spaced, 12 point font.

Below is a list of some points that you may want to consider in your review paper.

(1) You need to have at least two sections in your paper:

• Introduction: Summarize the article’s content, in a couple of pages, and explain the author’s goal in writing it, what it contributes to the field, how it fits in with other articles previously published, etc. Feel free to comment on any other aspects of the article that you consider important.

• Critique: Analyze the success of the article as promised by its title, relevance, accuracy, thoroughness, etc. You should consider the following questions before writing this section.

Does the article achieve its main goals?

If the article is arguing for one theory over another, do you consider its arguments reasonable?

What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the article, and how (if at all) might it be improved?

(2) Overall, your review may be positive or negative, depending on your assessment of it. Your review should not be limited to a synopsis of the article. It should provide enough information about the content of the article so that a reader unfamiliar with the details of the original article should be able to understand your review. You may assume that that target audience of your review consists of readers who are knowledgeable in the fields of phonology, second language acquisition and psycholinguistics, but who may or may not have direct knowledge of the article. You are encouraged to use any resources that might help you in writing your answers, such as class notes, other articles we have read, library materials, electronic databases, world wide web, etc.. In that case, please do not forget to properly cite the source you have used. You are strongly advised to review and edit what you have written before submitting the paper.

(3) The following questions are provided to guide your reading of the article. Do not submit a paper that simply answers these questions. Rather, use these questions to facilitate the understanding of the article.

1. What is the difference between LaCharité and Prévost's and Brown (1998)'s approach to Feature Geometry in L2 acquisition?

2. What are the main aims of LaCharité and Prévost's study?

3. What is the predicted order of acquisition for the sounds that they consider in the article? Why?

4. What possible problems can you identify in the methodology of the study? What can you say about the subject population?

5. How else can you explain some of the findings? You might want to refer to other models and theories, and potential methodological flaws we have discussed so far.

6. What is an ABX task (you might want to conduct a small search on the internet about this), and what extra factors may it introduce?

7. Do you agree with authors’ claim that their study proves that L2 contrasts are still learnable even when they employ inactive L1 features?

8. How does Feature Geometry explain why francophones map interdental fricatives to /t/ and /d/ in loanwords, whereas /h/ is deleted altogether?