Napouléon’s sequential heritage. Using a student error as a resource for learning and teaching pronunciation in the French foreign language classroom

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a student error produced in a French foreign language small-group seminar, involving four Swedish L1 first-term university students of French and a native French teacher. The error in question consists of a mispronunciation of the second vowel of the name Napoléon in the midst of a student presentation on the history of Corsica. Taking a conversation analytic approach to situated language use, the study considers the ways in which the erroneous pronunciation is turned into a resource whereby both teaching and learning opportunities are accomplished in teacher–student interaction. By tracking subsequent references to the initial error in a corpus of video-recorded small-group seminars, we explore some of the things that can be achieved by such referencing in later local contexts. The study demonstrates how not only students, but also the teacher, may learn in pedagogical interaction.

Keywords:

• pronunciation
• learning
• teaching
• second language acquisition
• French as a foreign language
• classroom interaction
• conversation analysis

Notes

1. This is treated by Phillipson as the ‘native speaker fallacy’ (1992, 193–199).

2. ‘Any setting organises its activities to make its properties as an organised environment of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable, reportable, tell-a-storyaboutable, analyzable—in short, accountable’ (Garfinkel 1967, 33).

3. As we also underscore the interactive basis for learning in this context, we take a position that differs considerably from the so-called ‘transmission model’ of teaching and learning, according to which there is a unidirectional transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the students.

4. For a recent example investigating ‘not knowing’ materialised as claims of insufficient knowledge (CIKs), see Sert and Walsh (2012).

5.

6. As the sign is not perceivable in the recording, we can only guess that it is either a sign pertaining to the IPA transcription system, or a Swedish ‘Å’, which is pronounced much like the French letter ‘O’.

7. Åhléns is a well-known Swedish department store.