IPCE-IPAC (InterPhonology of Contemporary English) is devoted to the study of variation on the basis of learner corpora of English, and consequently concerned with the acquisition and teaching of English as a foreign language. It is coordinated by Paolo Mairano, Université de Lille, and Caroline Bouzon, Université de Lille.
Goals
– to provide an international database of L2 English interphonology comprising learners with different L1 varieties as well as different L2 varieties as their targets/models (and not simply General British or General American);
– to provide data and analyses for phonologists, psycholinguists, education science specialists and trainers interested in the teaching/learning of English as a foreign/second language (PAC-ToE);
– to give a better picture of English spoken by non-natives in its unity and (geographical, social, educational and stylistic) diversity;
– to develop multi-level analyses of spoken non-native English: phonology, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, etc.
Originality
There are many learner corpora of English, but they typically focus on grammar, vocabulary and, more generally, written forms rather than explicitly/exclusively on phonology, they do not necessarily share a common protocol which allows the comparison of results and the cross-linguistic study of selected difficulties.
IPCE-IPAC’s originality notably relies on building comparable data, including with the PAC native speaker corpora.
Methodology
It is inspired by both the PAC and the IPFC (Interphonologie du Français Contemporain) protocols and is built with a modular structure. The core of the protocol revolves around:
– 2 wordlists (used for a repetition task and for a read-aloud task);
– a read-aloud task of the PAC text, as well as its version in the L1 (providing a baseline against which we compare the acquisition of L2 phonology);
– a read-aloud task of some sentences explicitly targeted towards eliciting different intonation patterns;
– a formal conversation with a teacher.
Other supplementary modules include:
– a L1-specific wordlist used to test specific difficulties observed for a given L1;
– a map-task and an informal conversation (in pairs with another learner);
– a picture description task.
The general proficiency level of learners who are invited to participate in the study ranges from A2 to C2 of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, 2001).
Latest news
To date, four L1s are represented in the project:
– French (Paris, Lyon, Lille): 25 speakers
– Italian (Torino): 12 speakers
– Chinese (Xi’an): 12 speakers
– Spanish (Chile & Colombia): 10 speakers
If you are interested in using the copyrighted IPCE-IPAC protocol for your fieldwork, feel free to contact us to enquire about PAC membership.
Members:
Caroline Bouzon, Université de Lille
Leonardo Contreras Roa, Université Rennes 2
Sophie Herment, Aix-Marseille Université
Nadine Herry-Bénit, Université Paris Nanterre
Takeki Kamimaya, Université Paris 8
Paolo Mairano, Université de Lille
Jeff Tennant, University of Western Ontario
Doctoral students:
Léo Clerc, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne
Audrey Gros-Bonfiglioli, Université Paris Nanterre
Raphaëlle Magnin, Aix-Marseille Université
Dylan Michari, Aix-Marseille Université
Marine Mouquet, Aix-Marseille Université
Victoria O’Callaghan, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès
Aicha Rahal, Aix-Marseille Université
Ioana Trifu-Dejeu, Université Paris Nanterre