Phonetic Portrait of a Ukrainian EFL Teacher: Prosodic Parameters in Academic Discourse

Abstract

Particular durable second language (L2) pronunciation distinctions of speakers who belong to the same first language (L1) community serve as their instant audio-identification markers, creating their typical phonetic portrait. Deviations in non-native English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher pronunciation remain a vibrant area of research due to their impact on speech intelligibility and comprehensibility, their pragmatic and emotional potential in oral verbal communication. The purpose of this contribution was to establish standard pronunciation deviations in academic speech of Ukrainian EFL teachers, thus depicting their phonetic portrait. A research methodology included acoustic and auditory analyses of pronunciation of British and Ukrainian speakers of English. The findings showed that Ukrainian EFL teachers display a set of common pronunciation distinctions: on the tonal level of the beginning and the end of the intonation group, tonal range, interval, rate and tone movement change in different parts of the intonation group, volume realization, speech rate; lack of qualitative and quantitative differences in the pronunciation of long and short monophthongs in stressed and unstressed syllables, full pronunciation of unstressed vowels. The results will find their application in EFL teacher education programs and further research of the accented speech nature.