An Evaluation of Learners' Perception of (near-) Native French Speaker

This study is concerned with the listening (and processing) skills, with focus on SHORTENED FORMS (SHOFOs) of SECOND TEMPO SPEECH among (near-) native speakers of French. It investigates ways in which students¿ performance in perceiving, processing and interpreting the French SHORTENED FORMS of a quick speech can be enhanced. At the same time, it examines the link between perception (of SHORTENED FORMS), Motivation, and learners¿ learning outcome. To this end, the notion of perseverance (which is conceived as the ability of the learners to deal with a ¿crisis point¿ and to stabilize their motivation as trouble occur), is exploited to suggest that the negative effects of SHORTENED FORMS on learners¿ motivation can be tackled, controlled and/or absorbed with the support of perseverance which sustains ¿Activity-Enjoyment¿. Actually, the study shows that, successful language learning can be determined by the learners¿ ability to encode and decode SHORTENED FORMS, and that faulty PERCEPTION and processing of SORTENED FORMS can also affect negatively learners¿ motivation (and other related dynamics such as perseverance).