ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions

The present paper describes an applied linguistics experiment aiming to evaluate the appropriateness of regular expressions (regex) to improve foreign language students' ability to identify the relationship between the graphic (letters) and phonic (phonemes) units of a language. Since the focus...

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Main Author: Jacopo Saturno
Format: Article
Language:fra
Published: Université Marc Bloch 2023-06-01
Series:ALSIC: Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d'Information et de Communication
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/6554
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author Jacopo Saturno
author_facet Jacopo Saturno
author_sort Jacopo Saturno
collection DOAJ
description The present paper describes an applied linguistics experiment aiming to evaluate the appropriateness of regular expressions (regex) to improve foreign language students' ability to identify the relationship between the graphic (letters) and phonic (phonemes) units of a language. Since the focus of the study is on metalinguistic rather than linguistic skills, the native language of the participants–L1 Italian–was chosen to this purpose. Specifically, regexes were used to formalise the phonological transcription rule of a set of graphemes (eg /ʃa/) well known for causing transcription errors due to the interference of orthography. Both before (T1) and after (T2), the regex formalisation task, 255 university students of foreign languages were asked to verbally explain the relevant transcription rules and transcribe a set of words containing the grapheme of interest. The results show that indeed, the accuracy of transcriptions and metalinguistics accounts significantly improved after the task. A discussion of the possible applications of regexes in the training of students of foreign languages and linguistics concludes the paper.
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spelling doaj-art-8e21f2d69b2c406d9f4a75bbed2edfee2025-08-20T02:37:45ZfraUniversité Marc BlochALSIC: Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d'Information et de Communication1286-49862023-06-0126310.4000/alsic.6554ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressionsJacopo SaturnoThe present paper describes an applied linguistics experiment aiming to evaluate the appropriateness of regular expressions (regex) to improve foreign language students' ability to identify the relationship between the graphic (letters) and phonic (phonemes) units of a language. Since the focus of the study is on metalinguistic rather than linguistic skills, the native language of the participants–L1 Italian–was chosen to this purpose. Specifically, regexes were used to formalise the phonological transcription rule of a set of graphemes (eg /ʃa/) well known for causing transcription errors due to the interference of orthography. Both before (T1) and after (T2), the regex formalisation task, 255 university students of foreign languages were asked to verbally explain the relevant transcription rules and transcribe a set of words containing the grapheme of interest. The results show that indeed, the accuracy of transcriptions and metalinguistics accounts significantly improved after the task. A discussion of the possible applications of regexes in the training of students of foreign languages and linguistics concludes the paper.https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/6554mother tonguespellingItalianlanguage awarenessregex
spellingShingle Jacopo Saturno
ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
ALSIC: Apprentissage des Langues et Systèmes d'Information et de Communication
mother tongue
spelling
Italian
language awareness
regex
title ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
title_full ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
title_fullStr ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
title_full_unstemmed ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
title_short ICT and metalinguistic competence: Developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
title_sort ict and metalinguistic competence developing phonetic transcription skills through regular expressions
topic mother tongue
spelling
Italian
language awareness
regex
url https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/6554
work_keys_str_mv AT jacoposaturno ictandmetalinguisticcompetencedevelopingphonetictranscriptionskillsthroughregularexpressions