In learning the phonetics of a foreign language an adult student takes in new sounds still sustaining the definitive influence of the phonological categorization of his or her mother tongue. In Russia phonetic correction mainly makes use of such methods as visual display as well as tactile and motive drills aimed at developing articulation. By making pronunciation subordinate to myoneural control that procedure virtually disregards the prosodic component of the speech. Teaching foreign language prosody as presented in this article is based on the fact that a student cannot only hear but also see the appropriate audio signal. The use of the visual channel enhances work on the prosody of a language to be studied both at the stage of its perception and at the stage of production.

The paper deals with the acquisition and use of marked orders in postbasic German learners of Italian, mainly in a functional and textual perspective. We consider that grammar (in the case in point, the domain of information structure rules) is affected both by general pragmatic principles and by language-specific rules that the learner has to learn together with the target language. A cross-sectional analysis and a short longitudinal sketch reveal an acquisitional sequence of marked orders beginning with presentative structures, going on with cleft sentences and, rather late, dislocations. Results are discussed with regard to the impact of different factors (general and language-specific information organisation principles, syntactic complexity, source language, text type, etc. ).

Due to the rise of the digital era, ICT has become one of the basic teaching tools of any language teacher and the language classroom, or at least part of it, has turned into a digital environment. In this contribution, we comment on seven tendencies which have emerged recently in the domain of computer assisted language learning (CALL). Each tendency is illustrated through a selection of recent projects realized within our research group ALT, Research Center on CALL.

The present study offers an overview of research on the acquisition of sociopragmatic competence in a foreign language. Our starting point is the "hardware", i.e. the bilingual brain and the storage of different types of pragmatic and linguistic information in it. We then adopt a teacher's perpective by looking at how sociopragmatic aspects of the target language are integrated in language courses and language classes. We go on to consider a number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language. A number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language are then considered. Theoretical and didactical implications are presented in the final part of the study.

In French L1 syllabuses, the term connecteur is defined according to semantic criteria and covering invariable words, and even syntagms commuting with adverbial phrases. They are given in lists and thus cannot be really used to interpret L1 texts.L2 learners are not made aware of the functioning of these heterogeneous L2 units, which makes their task even more arduous. The L1 filter compounded by limited awareness of the functioning of L1 thus leads to one-to-one relations that hinder L2 skills especially when items learnt by rote are artificially inserted instead of being used to connect ideas. A unified and contrastive grammatical terminology would allow an efficient metalinguistic awareness.

Ce texte est une contribution à la discussion des apports de la Communication Médiatisée par Ordinateur (CMO) à l'apprentissage de la langue étrangère. Nous appuyant sur la mise en place d'un dispositif mixte d'apprentissage du Français Langue Etrangère (FLE) en direction d'apprenants chypriotes de niveau A2, nous analysons plus particulièrement les potentialités de l'articulation pédagogique du présentiel, des clavardages et des forums pour la réalisation d'une macro-tâche écrite en langue étrangère. A partir des données issues des résultats de questionnaires administrés aux apprenants et aux tuteurs et de leurs interactions synchrones et asynchrones, nous détaillons comment l'accompagnement « mixte » est ressenti et mis en actes langagiers par les deux parties, tant sur le plan de la conduite de la macro-tâche que sur le plan des outils utilisés.

Today, the reflection about the potential of ICT for language learning and teaching unfolds in several directions. To the contribution of multimodality in learning environments is now added that of the new devices for communication and collaboration. We examine these contributions in a systematic manner in relation to the specific position of the foreign language (L2) writer as well as to his/her activity and production. After clarification of the concepts of writing and of learning how to write, and of our definitions of a few terms, I present the key concepts and factors that I believe should be taken into account in analyzing the ICT resources supporting the learning of L2 writing, then I present the devices themselves and their functionalities, in order to establish how they meet the criteria that have been outlined.

This paper focuses on the contribution supplied by a cross-linguistic approach of the diversity of discourse connectives. It includes two case-studies, which aim at implementations in the lexicological and teaching fields: first, the non equivalence of mais / but when sentence-initial mais does not mark an argumentative opposition; second, false cognates actually / actuellement which hardly ever correspond. These two complementary case-studies illustrate two cases of non direct translation.

The aim of this article is to show the importance of basing foreign language teaching pedagogy on a cognitive theory of learning. The article draws on John Anderson's theory of learning and is illustrated by two longitudinal studies. Learning is seen to involve two main stages :at the initial stage a procedural rule giving a specific form to a function is constructed from declarative knowledge from different sources using general problem-solving procedures ; a second phase entails the automatisation of the procedural rule and its gradual modification through processes of generalisation and discrimination. An analysis of classroom practice leads us next to re-focus the problem of instructed language learning on the compatibility between the aims of the teacher, the cognitive activity of the learner and his communicative performance and needs in the target language.

The main goal of this study is to show through the comparative study of the adjuncts décidément and decididamente (and some others) in French and Spanish respectively that a) morphological similarity between two languages is far from being a reliable criterion for translation, as exemplified in: Décidément, quel désastre ! / ¡Desde luego! *¡Decididamente!, ¡Qué desastre! ('It's definitely a disaster!'); b) using elementatry linguistic properties leads to better results. In addition to French décidément, which is the core of the debate, some others cases will also be considered like définitivement, naturellement, incontestablement, indubitablement vs desde luego, decididamente, naturalmente and sin duda. To avoid making arbitrary choices, a good translation of connectives and discursive markers must establish and apply very strict operating rules, as regards syntax and semantics of course, but also contextual and cotextual characteristics.

The development of Dutch in the North of France over the centuries and the teaching of this language are closely linked. Because of a near lack of a language policy for Dutch in the North of France, the number of learners of Dutch in that area remains very low. Moreover, the common history of the three countries involved (France, Belgium and the Netherlands) is not perceived in the same way. That is why the teacher of Dutch L2 in the North of France has to put the languages he teaches in a historical and cultural context, without giving any personal judgement. The learner of Dutch in the North of France has to prepare himself to co-operate with his neighbour across the border. Only such an approach and an adequate economic policy relative to the importance of learning Dutch will allow the teaching of Dutch to take off in the North of France.

We intend to describe the manner in which a French company, needing to internationalise rapidly, redefined its language policy and its approach to language training. A new English-language training programme was devised, complete with a quality control system. The need to train large numbers, 18000 people in this case, necessitated an industrial approach, previously unheard of in training.

This article addresses the problem why authentic pronunciation in a foreign language, contrary to other aptitudes in that same language, is so difficult, if not altogether impossible, to achieve. The problem is addressed from different theoretical perspectives: psycholinguistics, physiology and psychology. The approach by Guiora seems so far the most complete and the most promising. The problem of the necessity or the desirability of authentic pronunciation from a teaching point of view is not addressed. The article finishes on the question whether in the global village in which we live, the role of authentic pronunciation will not necessarily change in nature.

Numerous initiatives are currently underway in Australia to try to prevent the dramatic loss of traditional Aboriginal languages. Teaching these languages at school is one of them. However, this process of language revival raises issues that go beyond the pedagogical framework: Is there still enough data available to save all the languages? Are there enough trained staff to provide quality teaching? Following a general presentation of these issues, I account of my own endeavour to produce a teacher's guide of Bardi, an Aboriginal language of Western Australia. Although no one doubts the benefits of saving endangered languages, the issues that crop up once "in the field" are not the only ones that might have been expected.

This article presents the line of research that has recently come to be called CA for SLA - conversation analysis for second language acquisition. In a first step, roots of CA for SLA in ethnomethodology and in the classical CA work are sketched. In a second step, key-concepts and methodological underpinnings are discussed, which radically challenge received conceptions of language and language learning. In a third step, the major research themes are presented. The article concludes with a brief note on practical implications of the findings as well as the (mainly methodological) challenges the field is currently confronting.

This article discusses a study of the acquisition of past tenses in French, more in particular that of the "passé composé" by a number of non-guided learners of French having Swedish as their native language. Results of the study show that, contrary to the "aspectual" thesis as put forward by Andersen, the passé composé is used rather rapidly and widely to refer to the past, with verbs of different semantic types.

Le lexique des procès a des fonctions clés au niveau textuel. La compétence en langue étrangère, notamment la compétence narrative, que l'on traitera ici, peut se voir influencée par le manque du lexique des procès ou par l'acquisition partielle ou idiosyncrasique de celui-ci. Une approche textuelle et conceptuelle de quelques productions narratives en français et en espagnol langues étrangères et langues maternelles (FLM, ELM, FLE et ELE) nous permettra d'opposer les deux cas dans les deux langues, afin de mettre en relief la construction des récits oraux au niveau de l'information propositionnelle explicitée (principalement, référence au domaine des procès, de la spatialité et de la temporalité), ainsi qu'au niveau suprapropositionnel (cohésion et cohérence). Enfin, nous étudierons l'influence de l'input oral réel dans les productions orales des apprenants.

This article focusses on the acquisition of discourse strategies by foreign students learning French. The study is based on a corpus of business letters written by Norwegian students. Our aim is to demonstrate how many of the mistakes that occur in this particular genre are due to the fact that even advanced students tend to misinterpret discourse contexts and as a consequence, fail to choose the correct discours strategy. Whereas grammatical mistakes will be considered by the addressee as being due to a poor command of the language and therefore easily forgiven, a bad choice of discourse strategy will often be interpreted as a manifestation of impoliteness or servility.