Journal of Applied Languages and Linguistics

Research Article

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TITLE: How do Chinese students perceive the French spoken by Francophones and Chinese in France?

Author: Delin Deng

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.

Mailing address: 42 Rue d’ulm, 75005 Paris, France

              Sigan Ding

Lanzhou City University, Lanzhou, China.

Mailing address: Lanzhou Jiaotong University,88 Anning West Road, Anning district, 730070 Lanzhou, Gansu, China

Published online: 26 January 2018, pp. 77-88

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​Citation:

Deng, D. and Ding, S. (2017). How do Chinese students perceive the French spoken by Francophones and Chinese in France? in Journal of Applied languages and Linguistics, 1(1), pp.77-88.

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Abstract

This study exploits the linguistic perception of a group of French-majored Chinese students in China on the French spoken in France and in Canada, by having them listen to some short oral extracts recorded by speakers of French in the aforementioned countries. At the end of listening, participants give their impression on characteristics, such as personality, economic status, etc. of these different speakers in the oral extracts by replying to the questionnaire.

We get the results in the present research that on one hand, for the French-majored students in China, there is a discrepancy between the standard French in their mind and the real French in the francophone countries (areas). This could, however, be the consequence of a lack of variety of French introduced within the foreign language class. On the other hand, there is also a more negative assessment of the voice of their compatriots abroad, which might indicate what Laur (2014) called in his article the "self-hate". We therefore propose at the end of the study an introduction of the different accents and the different linguistic attitudes associated with these accents in the pedagogical practice in the foreign language class.

                                                                          © Applied Language Studies House Publications 2017. All rights reserved.

Keywords:

Linguistic perception; French, Chinese students; Francophone; Accents

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