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VOT production, writing skills, and general proficiency in multilingual learners of French: approaching the intertwinement of different linguistic levels

Abstract We investigate the interrelations between pronunciation and writing skills in French as a foreign language produced by two groups of bilingual learners (German-Russian; German-Turkish) and a monolingually raised German control group (each n = 10). As an indicator of the learners’ pronunciation skills, we refer to a perceptually relevant acoustic feature of stop production, “Voice Onset Time” (VOT). Our aim is to explore whether the learners’ proficiency at the level of pronunciation is mirrored in (1) their global language competencies and (2) their writing skills. We applied an extreme-cases approach based on the learners’ VOT productions in L3 French. Both positive and negative deviations from the French target pronunciation were found in all groups. In orthography, bilinguals showed lower correctness scores as compared to monolinguals. The VOT measurements yielded more target-like results for the bilinguals. For the monolinguals, the results reveal no correlation between pronunciation and general language proficiency as well as writing skills. In the bilinguals the investigated phenomena were more interrelated. Our analysis of semi-focused interviews conducted with all participants revealed that more target-like VOT productions correlate with a greater degree of phonological and multilingual awareness. This suggests that phonological and cross-linguistic awareness should be fostered in today’s multilingual classrooms.