Could You Say [læp˺ tɒp˺]? Acquisition of Unreleased Stops by Advanced French Learners of English Using Spectrograms and Gestures

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please see attached file.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I have done my best to revise the article as much as I could, but could not address every single element you mentioned. I thank you ever so much for the time it took you to carefully inspect and provide judicious remarks and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have grouped my comments, questions and suggestions according to the questions in "Recommendations for Authors."

 

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

The background is very short and includes no theoretical anchoring. Most of the text focuses on describing unreleased voiceless stop in French and English. Given the short format of the article, I think the most pertinent information in that specific section could be formulated more efficiently in order to make room to also anchor the study more clearly within the field of L2 pronunciation.

 

 

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

I have not found any research questions in the article and the hypotheses are presented differently in different sections of the article.

 

The method needs clarification with regards to the target items produced by the participants. How many target items did each participant produce for each context? A table would be helpful to get an overview of the data. As I read appendix B, the following questions arose:

- The pairs of words (but not the individual words with the stop in coda position) include only 1 item per combination. If I understand the procedure correctly each participant only read the words once per test. What was the reasoning behind not collecting more productions of the word pairs? How can you make sure that this single production is representative for each learner’s pronunciation?

- The list of "pairs of words" for English also includes individual words (a trap, a mat etc.). This was not the case for the French corpus. Additionally, I am not sure where I can find the results for the individual words in section 6 (they seem to be absent from figure 5 for example). I would encourage the authors to clarify the function of these words in the speech material and, if relevant, include them in the presentation of the results.

- Sentence-final stops: Why are there twice as many items for /t/ compared to /p/ and /k/? And more generally, given that you compare sentences and words, would you not want the same number of items for each condition?

 

From the discussion "In this study, the tools used to train the students were diverse." The paragraph then mentions different tools that are not mentioned in the method. Additionally, you mention in the background that you use spectrograms in training but I cannot find any mention of how spectrograms are used in section 4.

 

 

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

The discussion is difficult to follow, often due to the linking of sentences or to information not being explicit. The thoughts and reasonings included in the discussion seem somewhat far-fetched. Additionally, the hypotheses repeated in the discussion are different from the hypotheses in section 5.

 

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

Section 4 (Materials and Methods) describes three phases with the treatment group producing the phrases and sentences in each phase, two of which being post-tests. The results reference one post-test for the treatment group. It would be relevant for the reader to know which of the two you present.

 

Figure 4: For the sentences, the results for sentence-final and sentence-medial stops are separated. Why is that not the case for the words? Were the individual words excluded from the analysis?

 

Figure 5: If I have understood the method correctly the bars on the « word side » of the figure refer to one production per speaker. It would be good to clarify this in the text.

 

Section 6.3: As far as I understand the section on feedback is not really part of the results of the study. I cannot find any data/results in this section and you describe no method in the article for testing the feedback or its role in the training. While I understand the importance of appropriately formulated feedback for the application of the intervention in teaching, I do not see it as an important part to the specific study presented in the article and would therefore suggest it be excluded. That way the production results could be explored further. One interesting question that is not included in the analysis is development from immediate post-test to delayed post-test. 

 

Figure 7 is very interesting but it is not integrated in the text. I would suggest you either refer to it in the text or exclude it.

 

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

I would suggest summarising the conclusions clearly in the final section of the article. However, given that there are no research questions, evaluating any conclusions becomes tricky.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

While the English language as such only needs minor editing and proofreading, the text, on a more global level, needs work to be efficient and reader friendly (see also comment above about the discussion section).

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I have done my best to revise the article as much as I could, but could not address every single element you mentioned. I thank you ever so much for the time it took you to carefully inspect and provide judicious remarks and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I congratulate the authors on their thorough revision of this article. Overall, it is a great improvement over the original manuscript. The only suggestions I would make are to not repeat your hypotheses verbatim in the discussion section, but rather to lead into these more smoothly, integrating them into your text (e.g. "The goal of this study was to…several hypotheses were made regarding what would be found from this study, the first of which predicted…"

I am also suggest moving some of the spectrogram figures (on pg. 16-18) to an appendix, as they break up the readability of the text.

Lastly, I would suggest revising the section numbering. It seems like Section 2-5 could be made subsections in a 'Background' section. This seems like a more conventional way to structure your article. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

The text was rendered clearer, the discussion was re-written and a conclusion was also added. Reference list corrected and graphs were improved based on the reviewers' suggestions.

Thank you ever so much.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and

present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

I can see that the authors have made an effort to refer to theoretical approaches to L2 pronunciation but this part of the article is not yet at a level where the study is clearly anchored or properly contextualised in that field. The reader is left wondering how the study relates to research that does not specifically focus on unreleased stops.

 

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

Research questions are now included but could be more clearly formulated a presented. One hypothesis is presented in the paragraph above the RQs and H1 and H2 are presented in bullet points below the RQs. There is also a second Hypothesis 2 in the discussion section that is not mentioned in section 6 “Research questions & hypotheses.”

 

The section on materials and methods needs restructuring to make sure that information is clearly presented where the reader needs it.

 

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

Despite the authors’ comment that “this has been rendered clearer and more coherent” I see only minor changes to the discussion compared to the previous version. This means that this part of the manuscript is still difficult to follow, often due to the linking o sentences (e.g. ‘this’ used with an unclear antecedent).

 

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

More clearly in this version, yes. However, there is information in the results section that should have been presented under materials and methods, such as the exclusion of one participant in the control group mentioned lines 357–358.

 

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or

referenced in secondary literature?

There are no clearly stated conclusions in this manuscript.

 

 

Other comments

 

1: I really enjoyed reading the very first paragraph of the article. It is clearly formulated and brings the reader to the main concern of the article in a very efficient way. However, while the first paragraph is very good, the rest of the introduction still needs work. Information is repeated and references are not clearly distinguished from the present study. For example, if the reader does not know that Quintana-Lara studied vowels, they would be lead to believe that the focus of the referred study was unreleased stops. I would suggest making a separate section on input and interventions to make the input more accessible to the learner (which is my interpretation of the common theme in the next paragraphs but I might be wrong). This new section would include the main points from all paragraphs of the introduction apart from the very first one. In my opinion this work should also result in fewer references to the present study as the repetition of such references interrupts the reading

 

Figure 2: spelling 1 weEk later

 

7.1: This section is confusing to the reader. Example “The present study includes French-speaking second-year university students majoring in English. The students were in their early 20s. Some students dropped out during that period or were absent.” What period is referred to? Their early 20s or the second year of university, or maybe the time of the experiment?

 

7.2: I would suggest introducing the number of phases at the top of this paragraph.

 

7.4: Are all the subheadings needed? Each section consists of only 2–3 sentences. As a reader, I feel interrupted by the subheadings. I also wonder if all information here still relevant? For example the 7.4.2 reports on stimuli that were not recorded.

 

Figure 3: The k̚ in frame three is hardly visible. Would it be possible to use a different colour that allows for higher contrast against the background?

 

Figure 13: I would suggest using the same format for both illustrations, preferably using annotations in both. Additionally, since the figures are made in Praat, I would suggest using the Praat Picture window to make the illustrations (rather than screenshots), as this would probably make them clearer.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Just like for the previous version, the English language in the article is over all good. There are a few minor typos and words missing. Some paragraphs in the discussion stand out as poorly proofread but, on the whole, there is nothing major when it comes to word choice, sentence structure or the like. However the text still needs quite a lot of work. The structure/organisation is not very intuitive to the reader and many times this makes the text difficult to follow. For example, the many references to the present study that are interspersed throughout the background interrupt the reading and render some paragraphs misleading. See also comment above about the introduction.

Author Response

Figure 2: spelling 1 weEk later

=> oops! Corrected. Thank you.

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7.1: This section is confusing to the reader. Example “The present study includes French-speaking second-year university students majoring in English. The students were in their early 20s. Some students dropped out during that period or were absent.” What period is referred to? Their early 20s or the second year of university, or maybe the time of the experiment?

=> Changed to: "Unfortunately, some students dropped out from university or were absent at the time the experiment was being conducted."

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7.2: I would suggest introducing the number of phases at the top of this paragraph.

=> changed to:  "The experiment consists of three phases. During phase 1 \textit{(pre-training}), both the control and the test group were asked to read phrases"

********************

7.4: Are all the subheadings needed? Each section consists of only 2–3 sentences. As a reader, I feel interrupted by the subheadings. I also wonder if all information here still relevant? For example the 7.4.2 reports on stimuli that were not recorded.

=> The stimuli were recorded in English but not in French. I crossed out this section:

"Unfortunately, this pattern is mistakingly absent in the French stimuli and was therefore not recorded."

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Figure 3: The k̚ in frame three is hardly visible. Would it be possible to use a different colour that allows for higher contrast against the background?

=> you are right. This was changed to red & white. The  k was also coloured in white.

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Figure 13: I would suggest using the same format for both illustrations, preferably using annotations in both. Additionally, since the figures are made in Praat, I would suggest using the Praat Picture window to make the illustrations (rather than screenshots), as this would probably make them clearer.

=>

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Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

I can see that the authors have made an effort to refer to theoretical approaches to L2 pronunciation but this part of the article is not yet at a level where the study is clearly anchored or properly contextualised in that field. The reader is left wondering how the study relates to research that does not specifically focus on unreleased stops.

=> I don't know if this is enough but I tried to take your comments into account.

 

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

Research questions are now included but could be more clearly formulated a presented. One hypothesis is presented in the paragraph above the RQs and H1 and H2 are presented in bullet points below the RQs. There is also a second Hypothesis 2 in the discussion section that is not mentioned in section 6 “Research questions & hypotheses.”

=> I deleted the hypothesis above the RQs, put the hypothesis found in the discussion back to the method section and changed the order of the hypotheses to:

\item H1: voiceless stops are generally released in utterance final position in French. We hypothesise that French learners of English will release utterance-final stops in English too.
 \item H2: homorganic pairs of stops are more likely to exhibit stop unrelease in the first stop than heterorganic pairs.
 \item H3: the combination of two tools -- i.e. \textbf{spectrograms} to raise awareness and \textbf{gestures} to inhibit bursts in stops -- significantly helps the learners control stop unrelease in final position and in pairs of stops.

*****************

The section on materials and methods needs restructuring to make sure that information is clearly presented where the reader needs it.

=> I moved several elements from the results section to the methodology part and deleted them from the result section to avoid redundancy, including information on subjects COL28F and TAI01M.

=> allusion to Amand & Touhami's pilot study was removed since this is not relevant in this section. This was done so in other sections.

******************

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

Despite the authors’ comment that “this has been rendered clearer and more coherent” I see only minor changes to the discussion compared to the previous version. This means that this part of the manuscript is still difficult to follow, often due to the linking o sentences (e.g. ‘this’ used with an unclear antecedent).

=>

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

More clearly in this version, yes. However, there is information in the results section that should have been presented under materials and methods, such as the exclusion of one participant in the control group mentioned lines 357–358.

=> this information was moved to the participants  section. but a comparison of the results with subj. COL28F and without her was kept in the results section.

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

There are no clearly stated conclusions in this manuscript.

=> A conclusion was added after the discussion section

=> the discussion section was fully re-written.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

=> the text was checked and improved (missing words, grammar, clarity) and redundancies were removed as best as possible.