The Role of Prosody in Reading and Comprehension French’s Text (Case study: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

Language learners faces with important challenges during reading such as how to decode words, how to understand the message of text and how to know French’s phonetic especially prosody. This study tries to analyze two factors that influence comprehension: punctuation and inappropriate pauses which are related to the prosody during reading process. Using a descriptive-analytical method, six of second year students of bachelor’s degree from Tabriz University were chosen. Selected text of The Little Prince with its audio file were given to them to read while their voices were being recorded. These students were asked to read the text and explain what they understand. Then we analyzed their voices with Praat software. The students who respected the punctuation during the reading had better understanding of the text even though they had some inappropriate pauses. On the contrary, students who read quickly and monotone voice without pause, couldn’t understand the texts.