Meaning and orthography in L2 French

Abstract

While considerable research has been conducted on the acquisition of vocabulary in L2 learning, less attention has been paid to the acquisition of L2 orthography. The present research looks at the acquisition of one aspect of L2 orthography—accent marks in L2 French—for learners whose L1, English, does not feature accent marks. Specifically, this study investigates the effects of the knowledge of a word's meaning, or lack thereof, on learners’ ability to place accent marks on target items as well as to recognise accented versions of the same target items. Results suggest that exposure to a word's meaning increases learners’ ability to recognise the correctly accented version, but not the ability to place the missing accent.

Keywords:

• Classroom SLA
• Orthography
• Vocabulary
• Technology in L2A
• Accent marks

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Frédérique Grim, Jessica S. Miller, Daryl Rodgers, Viviane Ruellot, Anita Saalfeld, and the anonymous reviewer for their comments. All errors that remain are mine.

Notes

¹ “Clôture” and “piqûre” are actually feminine; these typos were not caught by the researcher until the study was in progress. Since the point of the study was to look at the acquisition of orthography, not grammatical gender, it was decided to leave the materials as they were for the second semester of data collection.