Sons et lettres: A Pronunciation Method for Intermediate-level French

26 difficult for English speakers may prove more challenging. Remember that, even when the exercises seem easy, they are still useful because they allow you to focus your attention on the target sounds as pronounced by a French speaker, which will help you develop an aural model that you can imitate. Classroom. After completing the web exercises, you will go over a written worksheet in class. Your instructor will review the spelling rule for the target sounds, model their pronunciation, and give you the opportunity to practice them. The textbook worksheets [ fiches d’exerices ] propose simple reading, speaking, and writing activities to develop your ability to recognize and produce the sounds in a series of words. In the exercise called Cherchez les lettres , you will search a list for words that contain a target sound. Other activities will ask you to think of words you know containing the target sounds, and to use them in playful or interesting ways. Throughout the exercises you will be repeatedly exposed to familiar and unfamiliar words with the lesson’s target graphemes. Most of the time the meaning of the words is of secondary importance: the focus is on their sound. While we encourage you to ask about unfamiliar words and to learn what they mean, we also encourage you to think of them as simple objects, and to enjoy and appreciate their forms and their sounds for their own sake. Such an approach will prove fruitful in ways that may not be obvious to you; it will utlimately enrich and develop your knowledge of the language. Symbols and Conventions C or V. The letters “ C ” and “ V ,” used in the spelling rules in some lessons, stand for consonant and vowel . As you will learn, certain sounds are often found in particular contexts (e.g., following a vowel or preceding a consonant). Inmost cases, “ C ” and “ V” will refer to consonant sounds and vowel sounds , but occasionally they will refer to letters. For example, in the rules for pronouncing o , the notation o + C finale muette refers to silent final consonant letters following the letter o , such as in mot or gros . In contrast, the notation o + C prononcée refers to any consonant sound following the letter o , such as in bol or stop . In this context, the pronounced consonant changes the sound of the letter o . IPA symbols. This book alsomakes use of the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These symbols are a convenient way of representing speech sounds in a consistent fashion, without the ambiguities inherent in ordinary spelling. Whenever a character appears between forward slashes (e.g., “/a/”), the slashes indicate that this is a phonetic symbol. A table of the IPA symbols used for French is found in appendix A. The symbols are often easy to