This paper takes up some of the challenges involved in teaching an undergraduate course on French phonetics in the era of globalization. The challenges or concerns that are mentioned here fall into two categories—those external to the classroom, such as the role and place of phonetics in the French curriculum today; and those internal to the classroom, pertaining more directly to what is being taught and learned in the phonetics course. The paper also looks at student views and opinions on the French phonetics course. These were taken from three sources: (1) comments written by the students on their ‘first-day-of-courses’ survey forms, (2) their end-of-term phonetics projects and (3) their anonymously written student course evaluations, filed at the end of the semester. Overwhelmingly, students viewed the phonetics course as a tool to help them improve their own pronunciation and accent; and expressed little interest in learning general phonetic principles.
Cite as: Saunders, G.E. (2016) Teaching an Undergraduate Course on French Phonetics in the Era of Globalization : Complex Concerns. Proc. International Symposium on Applied Phonetics (ISAPh 2016), 101-106, doi: 10.21437/ISAPh.2016-20
@inproceedings{saunders16_isaph,
author={Gladys E. Saunders},
title={{Teaching an Undergraduate Course on French Phonetics in the Era of Globalization : Complex Concerns}},
year=2016,
booktitle={Proc. International Symposium on Applied Phonetics (ISAPh 2016)},
pages={101--106},
doi={10.21437/ISAPh.2016-20}
}