Can simultaneous reading and listening improve speech perception and production? An examination of recent feedback on the SWANS authoring system

Recent CNRS-financed CALL research in Toulouse offers hope for improving L2 listening perception and spoken production through new on-screen, simultaneous reading and listening techniques and an emphasis on lexical stress visual annotation as a neglected key to acquiring basic spoken intelligibility. Although the research has concentrated principally on the French/English language pair its implications are potentially important for the study of all languages and the SMIL-based authoring system developed is language independent and has been used for producing prototype learning activities in German, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, Finnish, Russian and Arabic. The authoring system SWANS (Synchronised Web Authoring Notation System) uses metaguiding via highlighted annotated text together with synchronised sound to inhibit L1 interference during the reading process. The shared networked use of documents generated with SWANS constitutes an innovation in teacher training by allowing experts in local L1 interference problems to share their knowledge of lexical stress on a Europe-wide basis.