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MIAPARLE: Online training for the discrimination of stress contrasts

MIAPARLE is a public web application that is designed to offer a range of CAPT (computer-aided pronunciation teaching) tools for L2 learners. Besides helping language learners to reduce their foreign-accentedness, the goal of the platform is to test these tools, gather feedback and improve them according to their educational impact. In this article, we describe one particular training tool that focuses on stress perception. This tool is particularly useful for speakers whose L1 is a fixed-stress language, such as French. These speakers have difficulties perceiving and discriminating stress contrasts. To help them with this so-called stress 'deafness', the methodology used in the training is based on successive questions in which a visual pattern is associated with the sound of a lexical item. After successively completing their pre-tests, training and post-tests, the participants are given their improvement score. The performance of the training is evaluated by comparing the learner’s results at the pre- and post-test stages. Various methodological parameters, such as the number of training items or the number of visual patterns are tested in parallel in order to quantify their teaching efficiency, and to optimise the overall teaching impact.