The visualisation of pitch contours: Some aspects of its effectiveness in teaching foreign intonation

Abstract

Since 1976 work has been carried out towards the development of a microcomputer-controlled set of equipment for displaying pitch contours of sentences. The aims were to produce a practical set-up in which target sentences recorded on tape and ad-hoc imitations by learners/subjects could be displayed simultaneously on the upper and lower halves of a video monitor, and to test this set-up with two target languages and different groups of learners under different conditions. It was found that, for different groups of learners (Dutch learning English, Turks learning Dutch), subjects receiving audio-visual feedback performed better than those receiving only auditory feedback. No differential learning effects were found for L 2-proficiency level or age.