This study investigated the extent to which explicit and implicit instruction improve L1-Arabic speakers’ articulation of English words whose cognates were acquired earlier in their L2 French. Sixty-eight secondary school students, explicit (n=35) and implicit (n=33), participated in a programme incorporating focus-on-pronunciation activities, comprising three 45-minute sessions. Their learning motivation was first rated using an adapted version of Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB). Their pronunciation improvement was assessed through an oral-reading task. Ten new words were included in the post-test to see if they would generalize the instructed knowledge analogically. Results indicated that both explicit and implicit instruction had a positive impact on the students’ pronunciation advancement. However, the explicit group outperformed the implicit group with both the targeted and untaught words. There was insignificant interaction effect between instructional method and students’ motivation level, with higher motivation uniformly enhancing the effect of instruction. Nevertheless, motivation played a more crucial role in the learnt knowledge transferability when instruction was of implicit.

In general the pronunciation of French is not easy to learn, especially for beginners. The students of secondary education have much difficulty pronouncing French words which often creates fear, deters students and even makes them give up to practice French language. Our purpose is to present a phonetic system for the French novice not only to encourage communication in language but also which helps to learn easily and with interest. So we examined what is the norm for the pronunciation of French and analyzed the text books used in schools and the teaching materials for “FLE” in France. As a result, we found that seven oral and three nasal vowels are considered sufficient for communication. For the consonants there are almost no variations according to the standard or standardized French pronunciation.