Connected Speech Processing by LATA Students at the University of Ouaga 1 Pr. J. K-z, Burkina Faso

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Résumé

How the learner’s mind works has been subject to debates for half a century, in the field of cognitive psychology. That brain mechanism is significant in the analysis and description of the learner’s strategies of learning. It has become more challenging in the teaching/learning context as in that of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This study mainly addressed English for Academic/Vocational Purposes (EAP/EVP) students at the department of Languages for Tourism and Business (LATA) at the University of Ouaga 1 Pr Joseph KI-ZERBO, in Burkina Faso. The objective of the study was to assess those students’ listening-comprehension skills of English connected speech as spoken by the native. From Master I and II levels, 15 students (10 boys and 5 girls) took part in the study which focused on random sampling. Two oral Language Tests (i.e. Test 1 and Test 2) were used as instruments of research and permitted to collect quantitative data. This research method allowed to ensure the validity and reliability of the present research through the triangulation of the findings. According to the results of the study, the students of LATA have serious difficulties to decode connected speech due to the parallelism between their systems of encoding and decoding of the phonological processes. This cognitive inaptitude of phonological information processing might be a fallout from the teaching/learning strategies of English as a foreign language (EFL) in this specific context. However, if the issue is not fixed, LATA students who will have to use English as a lingua franca might experience similar listening difficulties when interacting with their international future business partners.

Mots-clés

Connected Speech; ESP; EFL; EAP; EVP; Cognitive Processing.