The Influence Of Musical Rhythmic Priming On Rhythmic Production Of French By Chinese Speakers

Music and language are particularly inextricably linked as activities shared by diverse human societies.It is precisely the strong relationship between them that has attracted an increasing amount of scholarly attention.According to the available literature,music rhythmic training offers considerable benefits for learning native and foreign languages,as well as provides guidance for foreign language teaching and research.On this basis,some researchers have focused their research on the relationship between musical rhythm priming and language learning.Nevertheless,there is still a dearth of research on the effect of musical rhythmic priming on the rhythmic production of foreign languages.Therefore,this study aims to explore the influence of musical rhythmic priming on the rhythmic production of French by Chinese speakers.The following are the primary issues addressed by this study:（1）Is Chinese students’ rhythmic production of French influenced by musical rhythmic priming? If the answer is “yes”,under which condition does the rhythmic priming work?（2）Can individual differences in working memory,rhythm sensitivity,and French level predict the final performance of French rhythm production in the experimental group?There were 52 subjects recruited for this study with French as their second foreign language.These 52 participants were assigned to two different groups,i.e.,the matched music-speech rhythm（experimental）and mismatched music-speech rhythm（control）groups.Finally,SPSS 23.0 was used to analyze the statistical data,and the findings indicated the following:1.The influence of rhythmic priming on participants’ French rhythmic production was significant in the matched music-speech rhythm group rather than in the mismatched music-speech rhythm group,which implies that rhythmic priming is conducive to speech production when it is matched with speech rhythm.2.In the matched music-speech rhythm group,the positive effects of rhythmic priming in the matched group were not predicted by the individual differences in working memory,rhythm sensitivity,and French proficiency.This suggests that rhythmic priming has played a significant role in facilitating individuals’ rhythmic production of non-native speech without being influenced by the aforementioned individual factors.