L2A of French stop-liquid clusters (Steele 2001, 2004)

Description: This study investigated the acquisition of French stop-liquid and liquid-stop clusters by Mandarin-speaking learners of beginner and intermediate proficiency in Montreal. Native Quebec French speakers served as controls.

Data elicitation: Learners participated in a word-learning task. Targets (n=50) and distractors (n=52) were randomized and grouped into 34 sets of 3 words each. For each word in a set, subjects first saw an image and heard the word repeated twice; learners then said the word once when prompted (REP). Learners then heard three sentences containing the word followed by the question 'Qu'est-ce que c'est?' (QQC). Finally, the three images were presented in random order and the learners were asked to name (NAM) them. In Steele (2001), there was no presentation of the orthographic form of the target words. In a follow-up study (Steele 2004; FL072-081), the images were accompanied by the written form of the word during the learning phase.