Sammanfattning:

Abstract

 L1 speech production is often interrupted by hesitations revealed through a variety of phenomena ranging from silent pauses to comments. Most of these interruptions are caused by the action of a control system, a  “monitor“, which checks our speech internally while it is produced or after the production has reached the articulatory level. Speech production is checked against an internal model of lexical and grammatical correctness. If the demands of the monitor are not met, a repair may take place so that the speaker’s production reaches the expected level of correctness. It would seem that the result of constant interruptions, followed by repairs, would bring disorder into our speech but, in most cases, the listener is not disturbed by these interruptions, since his perception system brings order and re-establishes the linearity of the propositional content.The speech of L2 learners is controlled during and after production. Even if the monitor follows the same pattern of work when controlling L2 production, the repair is not necessarily done in a similar way because the learner’s internal grammar and lexicon are not complete and cannot be consulted as quickly as L1 lexicon and grammar. L2 learners rely on a certain amount of acquired knowledge but they also need to be given the time to refer to learned rules and patterns because the retrieval of these has not yet been automaticized.  As teachers, we often resent hesitations as disturbing and as an indication of the learner’s incapacity to produce correct speech.In this study, we observe the L2 speech production of learners of French and their behaviour when meeting linguistic problems. The study is concentrated on repetitions and recasts produced when the learner hesitates and shows signs of an effort to retrieve learned knowledge. These repetitions and recasts are presented as different hypotheses put forward by the learner in his/her attempts to reach a solution to a linguistic problem. They show the L2 speech production as a step-by-step process. The focus here is on repetitions and recasts in connection with French  -ment-adverbs.