Can music help learners and teachers in word stress perception?

Prosody is essential in foreign language (FL) proficiency but is not always easy to acquire, particularly when languages show different prosodic systems such as Dutch and French. Considering the acoustic and neurological parallelism between music and language, this study aims at analysing the impact of musical elements on the perception of Dutch word stress by French learners. More specifically, we examined whether the perception of Dutch word stress was positively influenced by (1) the different musical characteristics of the learners, such as music training, musical abilities or engagement in music activities, and (2) FL teaching methods using music (melodies or rhythm). 36 university students filled in a music questionnaire determining their musical characteristics and performed a XAB recognition task, in which stimuli where either spoken, either spoken on a beat, either sung. Results showed that there exist positive and significant correlations between some musical characteristics of the learners and the perception of Dutch word stress. Moreover, listeners detect word stress significantly better and faster when the words are sung than when they are naturally spoken or spoken on a beat. As such, our results suggest that the perception of Dutch word stress can be influenced by (1) personal musical characteristics, and (2) the use of melodies in FL teaching methods.