Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Articles

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2005)

Phénomènes d’hésitation dans des saynètes jouées par des élèves d’immersion

  • Olivier Malet
  • Parth Bhatt
Submitted
October 15, 2012

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine temporal variables (speech rate, average length and placement of pauses, etc.) and other types of hesitation phenomena (repetition of syllables, words and sequences, reformulations and self-corrections) found in two short sketches produced by thirty-one Grade 7 students enrolled in an Ontario French Immersion program. The results of our analysis show that Immersion students speak as quickly as or even more quickly than Francophones but do not use pause duration as an indicator of the nature of syntactic boundaries (minor vs. major). These students also produce a large number of phrase internal pauses and hesitations. These numerous interruptions have a negative impact on the intelligibility of their speech output.