From Verbo-Tonal Method teachers' training to Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training tools: Insight from L3 pronunciation studies and automatic speech processing technology among Japanese learners of French

International audienceIn the field of foreign language pronunciation education, four categories of teachers can usually be distinguished, ordered here in increasing degree of expertise: (i) instructors with no or little training, (ii) instructors shaped in a single mold (e.g. perceptual vs articulatory framework), (iii) instructors versed in several approaches (e.g. Verbo-Tonal method, Silent Way, articulatory exercises with minimal pairs or cross-linguistic contrastive contrasts), (iv) instructors versed in several approaches and knowledgeable in both Second Language Acquisition’s and phonetics-phonology’s latest trends. Yet, however skillful they can be, teachers are usually overwhelmed by unfavorable contextual constraints weighing on their professional practice (e.g., large numbers of students and little time for individual phonetic assessment and feedback), which is why, at the beginning of the 21st century, innovative pedagogical technology must be called upon, in the same spirit as it was in the 1950s when the Structuro-Global Audio-Visual methodology (SGAV) introduced new tools in language classrooms. The Verbo-Tonal method of pronunciation education, which was deeply linked to the coreprinciples of the SGAV pedagogy (e.g. no written input during the first phase of acquisition), was not only popular in Europe but also popularized under many guises from Zagreb (Croatia) to Saint-Cloud (France), Mons (Belgium), Knoxville (USA), and Tokyo (Japan) for example, hence the manifold generations of students who were trained in the Verbo-Tonal method since its inception all across the globe, thanks to passionate and dedicated instructors. Since then, however, the field of second language pronunciation has evolved. The rise of computer-assisted pronunciation training programs has prompted some of these former students to wonder how they could offer, to their students and peers, pedagogical insight and tools combining the successful principles of the Verbo-Tonal method with the collective knowledge accumulated in the field of interphonology over the past 20 years, as well as recent advances in automatic speech processing techniques. This is what 38 we will be presenting and discussing in this talk, with concrete illustrations from L1-Japanese learners of L3-French drawn from corpus-based and automatic speech processing- based joined projects the authors have been leading over the past five years