This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French aspirateur, Catalan aspirador ‘vacuum cleaner’) while clapping to the rhythmic structure of those words or only repeated the words. Participants’ oral productions before and after training were rated for accentedness by three French native speakers. Results showed that in both groups, participants’ pronunciation improved after training, and crucially, children in the clapping group improved significantly more than those in the non-clapping group. Additionally, an acoustic analysis of the duration of word-final vowels indicated that only children in the clapping group significantly lengthened the final vowel after training, thus producing more target-like durational patterns. Our results suggest that a brief embodied intervention based on highlighting the rhythmic structure of words through hand-clapping has the potential to enhance pronunciation in a foreign language. The implications for second language teaching of pronunciation are discussed.

这项研究测试了拍手对新学习的法语单词的节奏对7至8岁的加泰罗尼亚语儿童这些单词的发音的影响。在一项采用前后测试设计的简短培训实验中，有28名儿童或者重复了法语中的同义单词（例如，法语aspirateur，加泰罗尼亚aspirador）“真空吸尘器”），同时鼓掌这些单词的节奏结构或仅重复这些单词。由三位法语为母语的人士对参加者在培训前后的口述作品的口音进行了评估。结果表明，两个组的参与者在训练后的发音均得到了改善，并且至关重要的是，鼓掌组的孩子比不鼓掌组的孩子的发音明显提高。另外，对单词最终元音持续时间的声学分析表明，只有鼓掌组的孩子在训练后才显着延长了最终元音，从而产生了更多类似目标的持续时间模式。我们的结果表明，基于通过拍手突出单词的节奏结构的简短体现干预措施有可能增强外语发音。