Schedule: 2009-09-12 (15:00 - 15:45)
Parallel Session 1 (Room A-30)

Title: Managing the monolingual mindset. SWANS : an authoring system for raising awareness of L2 lexical stress patterns and for inhibiting mother-tongue interference.
Authors: Anthony Stenton
Abstract: Until the end of the 20th century many EFL or ESL students were victims of what has been called “the literary tradition”. After 12 years of academic study, they would finish their university careers with a ‘reasonable’ level in reading and an ‘unreasonably’ lower level in speaking. Recent pressures of globalisation have lifted some of the psychological barriers to speaking : students are now readier to abandon the cocoon-like, tribal, security of their mother-tongue and L2 oral fluency has undoubtedly improved. Accuracy in spoken form, however, has made considerably less progress. The intrusive and distracting presence of foreign stress patterns can and often does lead to communication breakdown. It is a problem of spoken production and auditory perception and, as with all communication, needs to be analysed from both sides. If many language students display ignorance or contempt for the rules of English stress patterns many anglophone listeners are both prejudiced and intolerant and refuse to make the necessary adjustments. In the field of pragmatics such problems are under-researched perhaps because tolerance thresholds are based on diverse linguistic experience and perceptual acuity making generalisation difficult. Similarities between racial intolerance and linguistic intolerance are striking. Student motivation and, inevitably, student intelligence are also regularly advanced as explanations of communication problems but in the following article we lay the blame squarely with the real culprits in the European tradition - neural commitment towards mother tongue sounds and a vastly underestimated, not to say dangerous, man-made cultural artefact : the Latin alphabet itself. In an attempt to escape from the contradictions of using a standardised alphabet for languages using different lexical stress patterns and to improve memory through the use of dynamic text reading techniques, a team of 12 researchers from 4 laboratories in Toulouse have developed a CNRS-funded authoring system called SWANS (Synchronised Web Authoring Notation System) which is currently undergoing validation in several European countries via language centres associated with CERCLES. SWANS, which uses Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1, W3C, 2006) to generate web pages, allows novice teachers to synchronise text and sound and to annotate text typographically in order to raise awareness of lexical stress patterns. Working with a sample of over 250 students, recent studies have shown that computer-based dual coding (Pavio) of animated text improved perception and also led to more efficient L2 oral communication in controlled conditions. This article presents the ideas underlying the development and analyses feedback from an international network of field experiments on the pedagogical aspects of learning through on screen reading of annotated, sound synchronised texts.
Keywords: lexical stress, speech perception, SMIL, synchronisation, dual coding, neural commitment, networking

Main topic: Curriculum development for CALL.

Biodata: Dr Tony Stenton, LAIRDIL, (M.A. Cambridge University, PhD Université Bourgogne) is a Senior English lecturer in Toulouse University I and specialist in CALL. He is a member (Treasurer) of the Executive Council of CercleS (European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education) and responsible for the CercleS Focus Group on New Technologies.
Type of presentation Paper presentation

Paper category Research & Development

Target educational sector Higher education

Language of delivery English

EU-funded project Yes

Schedule:	2009-09-12 (15:00 - 15:45) Parallel Session 1 (Room A-30)
Title:	Managing the monolingual mindset. SWANS : an authoring system for raising awareness of L2 lexical stress patterns and for inhibiting mother-tongue interference.
Authors:	Anthony Stenton
Abstract:	Until the end of the 20th century many EFL or ESL students were victims of what has been called “the literary tradition”. After 12 years of academic study, they would finish their university careers with a ‘reasonable’ level in reading and an ‘unreasonably’ lower level in speaking. Recent pressures of globalisation have lifted some of the psychological barriers to speaking : students are now readier to abandon the cocoon-like, tribal, security of their mother-tongue and L2 oral fluency has undoubtedly improved. Accuracy in spoken form, however, has made considerably less progress. The intrusive and distracting presence of foreign stress patterns can and often does lead to communication breakdown. It is a problem of spoken production and auditory perception and, as with all communication, needs to be analysed from both sides. If many language students display ignorance or contempt for the rules of English stress patterns many anglophone listeners are both prejudiced and intolerant and refuse to make the necessary adjustments. In the field of pragmatics such problems are under-researched perhaps because tolerance thresholds are based on diverse linguistic experience and perceptual acuity making generalisation difficult. Similarities between racial intolerance and linguistic intolerance are striking. Student motivation and, inevitably, student intelligence are also regularly advanced as explanations of communication problems but in the following article we lay the blame squarely with the real culprits in the European tradition - neural commitment towards mother tongue sounds and a vastly underestimated, not to say dangerous, man-made cultural artefact : the Latin alphabet itself. In an attempt to escape from the contradictions of using a standardised alphabet for languages using different lexical stress patterns and to improve memory through the use of dynamic text reading techniques, a team of 12 researchers from 4 laboratories in Toulouse have developed a CNRS-funded authoring system called SWANS (Synchronised Web Authoring Notation System) which is currently undergoing validation in several European countries via language centres associated with CERCLES. SWANS, which uses Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1, W3C, 2006) to generate web pages, allows novice teachers to synchronise text and sound and to annotate text typographically in order to raise awareness of lexical stress patterns. Working with a sample of over 250 students, recent studies have shown that computer-based dual coding (Pavio) of animated text improved perception and also led to more efficient L2 oral communication in controlled conditions. This article presents the ideas underlying the development and analyses feedback from an international network of field experiments on the pedagogical aspects of learning through on screen reading of annotated, sound synchronised texts.
Keywords:	lexical stress, speech perception, SMIL, synchronisation, dual coding, neural commitment, networking
Main topic:	Curriculum development for CALL.
Biodata:	Dr Tony Stenton, LAIRDIL, (M.A. Cambridge University, PhD Université Bourgogne) is a Senior English lecturer in Toulouse University I and specialist in CALL. He is a member (Treasurer) of the Executive Council of CercleS (European Confederation of Language Centres in Higher Education) and responsible for the CercleS Focus Group on New Technologies.
Type of presentation	Paper presentation
Paper category	Research & Development
Target educational sector	Higher education
Language of delivery	English
EU-funded project	Yes