Bilingual Phonological Development of French Immersion Students
Creators: Weich, Aunya
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

<p>The current research of French Immersion suggests that the education of a minority second language is complex, important to study and yet to be understood in the context of Western Canada (Walker, 2012). This thesis aims to better understand bilingual speech productions in French Immersion students in Alberta, by identifying children’s emerging and accurately produced consonants. This thesis will focus on the following research questions: What is the overall percentage of consonants correct across grade levels and what are the patterns of accuracy for each consonant in initial and final position? What characteristics influence accuracy? This will be followed by an additional acoustic analysis of stop consonants that aims to highlight the variability identified in final position. <br>
A total of 37 students participated in the study from grades 1, 3 and 5. These students are fluent bilinguals and the conditions in the community require the use of English in the majority of contexts outside of school and family circles. They completed French picture naming tasks that contained targeted consonants and probed spontaneous speech productions. Their speech productions were transcribed and analyzed acoustically.  From the transcriptions, the student’s accuracy of consonant production and error patterns were obtained. A descriptive analysis was used to highlight consonant accuracy in grade and word position. Finally, a mixed effects logistic regression model was used to measure the effect of word position, grade and unshared/shared consonants. From the acoustic transcriptions, the characteristics of their final consonants were measured, and a linear mixed effects model was used to analyze the acoustic measurements of stop consonants in word final position paired with a descriptive analysis of acoustic values. <br>
The results reveal students in grade 1 were able to produce 90.3% accuracy, students in grade 3 produced 91.0% accuracy and students in grade 5 produced 95.8% accuracy across all consonants. Despite relatively high consonant accuracy, these results reveal accuracy that is lower than existing consonant accuracy in francophone children. Challenges emerged with the nasal palatal /ɲ/, the fricative alveolar /z/ and fricative alveolar /s/, specifically in final position. In addition, de-voicing was a common challenge with the bilabial stop /d/, velar stop /g/. These findings highlight specific developmental data of French Immersion students. In addition, the acoustic analysis documents an undefined grade progression in either duration measures. <br>
This study focused on the phonological emergence of French Immersion students learning French in a minority sociolinguistic environment through two spontaneous speech tasks, PCC and acoustic analysis of stop consonants. The results of this study establish reference data for French Immersion students. The descriptions of children&#39;s emerging consonants provides insight on their phonetic and phonological systems and can be used to inform researchers, educators and policy makers in French Immersion education programs.  </p>