A Study of Intonation Awareness and Learning in Non-native Speakers of English

Abstract

Learning the intonation of a foreign language entails complex perceptive and productive processes mostly beyond the common awareness level. Its instruction demands a thorough understanding of its prosodic features and the appropriate pedagogical practices and resources. This paper reports the findings from a computer-assisted study of the learning of English intonation by Spanish learners. The purpose of this experiment is twofold: (1) To investigate the effects of a multi-sensory approach on the learners’ awareness of the form and meaning of intonation in speech; and (2) to determine the extent to which this approach would generalise to improvement in the prosodic features of controlled and spontaneous utterances. The study employed a pretest/post-test design with two groups of Spanish learners: an experimental (N = 10) and a control group (N = 10). The learners’ pre- and post-test recordings were acoustically analysed and assessed by four native speakers of English. A final learner-questionnaire followed the training. The results reveal a gain in intonation awareness and significant improvement in the prosodic performance of the experimental group.