This article presents the results of a needs assessment study carried out with university students who were preparing to work as health professionals. Questionnaire data gauged the students' expectations for language courses intended specifically for their areas of specialization. Analysis follows a multidimensional approach and examines profiles of the student body, student aspirations, and course contents. The results reveal a number of distinct patterns, which are discussed in comparison with current trends and practice in second language acquisition. They constitute a potential and valuable source of information for designing curricula for health professionals based on learners' needs.FROM TIME TO TIME EDUCATORS MUST EXamine and adjust teaching programs and pedagogical materials in order to meet better the changing realities that occur within society. Such adjustments are an appropriate dynamic of education systems as they strive to play an active role in social collectivities. Recent demographic changes in the "upstate" region of South Carolina (in the United States) have created a situation in which medical personnel need to develop multilingual skills in order to communicate with pa-

Cet article réexamine le concept de réseau social utilisé en sociolinguistique variationniste en analysant le rôle que jouent divers domaines d’affiliation liés aux liens forts et aux liens faibles à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de la communauté dans la variation morphosyntaxique dans les expressions en tête des propositions adverbiales du français acadien du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick (Canada). D’après les résultats d’analyses de type règle variable, le facteur réseau social est en mesure de prédire l’emploi des formes traditionnelles comme que, quand que et si que de manière plus stable que tout autre facteur extralinguistique, incluant la classe sociale. L’analyse des correspondances est utilisée pour opérationnaliser le facteur réseau social à partir des affiliations des sujets dans les domaines d’affiliation. Cette étude suggère que, dans l’explication de la variation sociolinguistique, les liens faibles méritent un examen plus approfondi et que les statistiques multivariées sont un outil des plus appropriés pour ce genre d’étude.

This article reports the findings of research on the acquisition of French consonants by native speakers of Cantonese. An error analysis based on a careful phonetic transcription of production data resulted in a scale of difficulty of consonants in both initial and final positions. Several of the major patterns of difficulty are explained by the Markedness Differential Hypothesis. On the basis of errors found, and which are not perfectly predicted by this theory, it is shown that there is an interaction of language acquisition with markedness reversals.

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