Dalarna University's logo and link to the university's website

À l’aide d’une tâche de dictée, nous avons étudié l’influence de l’effacement du schwa (e muet) sur la reconnaissance des mots chez 30 apprenants suédophones. Trente suites composées d’un article défini (le/la) et d’un substantif contenant un schwa non prononcé ont été utilisées comme stimuli. Les résultats montrent que l’effacement du schwa en syllabe interne de mot, par exemple le cim(e)tière, ne complique pas généralement la reconnaissance des mots mais parfois la détection du schwa. Il s’agit alors de difficultés liées au choix de graphème, les apprenants écrivant par exemple le cimitière. Les mots qui posent le plus de problèmes de détection du schwa et de reconnaissance des mots sont ceux qui sont produits avec effacement du schwa en syllabe initiale et dont la consonne initiale du substantif se rattache à gauche avec le déterminant. La resyllabation déplace les frontières lexicales, par exemple le r(e)gard prononcé [ləʁ-ɡaʁ], ce qui induit des transcriptions du type leur gare chez les apprenants.

Using a dictation task, we studied the effect of schwa deletion (mute e) on word recognition by 30 Swedish-speaking learners. Thirty sequences composed of a definite article (le/la) and a noun containing a deleted schwa were used as stimuli. The results show that the deletion of the schwa in an internal syllable of a word, for example le cim(e)tière, does not often complicate the word recognition but sometimes the detection of the schwa. This difficulty is linked to the choice of grapheme, with learners writing le cimitière for example. The words that pose the most problems in detecting the schwa as well as in word recognition are those which are produced with schwa deletion in the initial syllable and whose initial consonant is attached on the left with the determiner. The resyllabification that takes place moves the lexical boundaries, for example le r(e)gard pronounced [ləʁ-ɡaʁ], which induces transcriptions like leur gare among learners.

The supervision of degree theses is one of several institutional practices in higher education that are regulated by various systems of rules. However, the social roles involved in the practices may still be largely based on interpretation, negotiation and personal choice. Research on supervision has primarily targeted the doctoral level, but the present study targets the Bachelor level. Existing inventories of roles are based on supervisor roles, but the present study also includes student roles. Existing inventories are not always based on empirical data, but the present study uses focus group discussions with supervisors and responses to open-ended questions from a questionnaire to students as a basis for extracting supervisor and student roles. The supervisor and student participants came from two language departments at a Swedish university. The local guidelines relevant to supervision underspecify roles. The findings show a considerable complexity and a broad repertoire when it comes to roles attributed to supervisors as well as students. Some roles may be plotted along a scale, where stakeholders may have different preferences and needs, such as along transactional and interactional types, or between support and management; or between seeing the thesis primarily as a process or a product.

Ansvar har både juridisk och etisk betydelse och är ett nyckelord i högre utbildning. I den högre utbildningen förekommer en rad olika roller med olika juridiskt ansvar såväl som olika förväntningar på etiskt ansvar. I sammanhang där flera roller är sammankopplade för att lösa en komplex uppgift finns potentiellt olika syn på ansvarsfördelning. Det gäller i synnerhet handledningssituationen, där etiskt ansvar och ansvarsfördelning kan vara särskilt omgärdade av gråzoner, särskilt vad gäller nyckelrollerna student och handledare. Studien behandlar studenters syn på ansvar i kandidatuppsatsprocessen. En enkätundersökning med studenter från examensarbeteskursen inom två språkämnen vid ett svenskt lärosäte (Högskolan Dalarna) visar att majoriteten anser sig ha fått processen förklarad vid kursstart, men att en relativt stor andel inte håller med om det. Några pekade på skillnader i beskrivningar och praxis. Studenterna anser att student och handledare har ett gemensamt ansvar för flera aspekter av uppsatsarbetet, men att studenten har större ansvar för t.ex. att uppsatsen är fri från plagiat och att den blir klar i tid och handledaren större ansvar för t.ex. att forskningsfrågan är relevant för ämnesområdet och att metoden och materialet är lämpliga. Svaren pekar på en viss variation i synen på ansvar. Ser man exempelvis närmare på exakt vilka aspekter av uppsatsprocessen man anser att studenten respektive handledaren bör ha ansvar för, så är bilden inte samstämmig. Resultaten pekar på ett behov av att diskutera ansvar och därmed medvetandegöra de bilder vi bär med oss in i uppsatshandledningen.

Vid svenska högskolor och universitet finns idag ett ökande antal äldre studenter. Samtidigt förekommer i dagens samhälle negativa fördomar om äldres lärande. Denna rapport redogör för en enkätstudie som genomfördes med 30 lärare som undervisar i nätbaserade språkkurser vid ett svenskt lärosäte. Syftet med studien var att ta reda på hur dessa lärare förhåller sig till äldre studenter. Undersökningen visar att lärarna inte reflekterar särskilt mycket över kursdeltagarnas ålder. Många ser dock äldre studenter som en tillgång i seminariegruppen på grund av deras erfarenheter, mognad och engagemang. Lärarna gör inte åldersindelade grupper under de nätbaserade seminarierna och anpassar inte undervisningen specifikt till äldre kursdeltagare. I rapporten diskuteras hur nätbaserad undervisning kan vara en fördel för äldre studenter eftersom den på många sätt redan är flexibel och anpassad efter studenternas individuella behov.

French Online Learning: a Gerontological Perspective

To adapt to older students, we conducted a study consisting of a perception test and a survey related to French taught online at our university. The purpose of this study was to see how oral perception, comprehension and communication work in online synchronous seminars. The results were positive. The comprehension of French sounds online works quite well for our learners regardless of their age, and the students themselves find that perception and oral comprehension during synchronous online seminars works well. In addition, no respondent found that cooperation across ages was a problem.

Pour nous adapter à des étudiants plus âgés, nous avons fait une étude composée d’un test de perception et d’une enquête, concernant le français enseigné en ligne à notre université. Le but de cette étude était de voir comment fonctionnent la perception, la compréhension et la communication orales lors des séminaires synchrones en ligne. Les résultats sont positifs. La discrimination des sons français en ligne fonctionne assez bien pour nos apprenants quel que soit leur âge et les étudiants eux-mêmes trouvent que la perception et la compréhension orale lors des séminaires synchrones en ligne fonctionnent bien. De plus, aucun répondant ne trouve que la coopération entre les âges ne pose problème.

The pronunciation of French schwa by Swedish learners of French

The purpose of this paper is to examine the pronunciation of French schwa by Swedish learners of French as a foreign language. The study investigates how the learners deal with schwa deletion (mute e), which is a very frequent phonological process in spoken French, and also how the learners pronounce the schwa when it is not deleted.

The corpus used for this study was built in the context of the international project IPFC (Interphonologie du français contemporain), and consists of recordings of learners with Swedish as their mother tongue.

Thirty learners participated in the first part of the study. Their task was to read and repeat isolated terms from two lists of words and to read a short text. The results show that many learners have difficulties in pronouncing French schwa correctly. In fact, they often pronounce it as [e] or [ɛ] (e.g. revanche pronounced [ʁevɑ̃ʃ] instead of [ʁəvɑ̃ʃ]). This problem often persists even for very advanced learners, even though learners who have spent at least six months in a French-speaking country generally have better results than those who have spent less time in the target culture. However, there is a wide variation among learners and also from one word to another. As to schwa deletion, the results show that the students delete very few schwas. Moreover, the results indicate that the learners do not produce schwa deletions that involve left attachment of the word’s first consonant with the preceding word across the lexical boundary (e.g. dans le coin [dɑ̃l.kwɛ̃]). 

The part of the corpus used for the second part of the study consists of dialogues between 10 of the students. The analysis shows that the learners make more schwa deletions in conversation than when they read a text (as studied in the first part). Compared to native French speakers however, the learners make fewer schwa deletions, especially in the initial syllable of polysyllabic words (e.g. semaine, demi). The learners do not make any incorrect schwa deletions, unlike what has been observed among Dutch learners. When it comes to the vowel quality, fifty percent of the students pronounce most schwas correctly, while the other half often pronounce the vowel incorrectly as [e] or [ɛ]. Even some of the students who lived for several years in France have problems with the pronunciation. The results also show that schwa is better pronounced in monosyllabic words (e.g. je, le) than in polysyllabic words.