The Effectiveness of the Instruction of the Intonation of English Implications to L1 Spanish Trainee Teachers
Journal
Logos: Revista de Lingüística, Filosofía y Literatura
ISSN
0719-3262
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Marco Sandro Antonio Ugarte Olea
DOI
doi.org/10.15443/RL2930
Abstract
When it comes to Second and Foreign Language Teaching, the teaching of pronunciation has, for long, been neglected (Derwin & Munro, 2005) and it has not been given due attention in textbooks (Thompson, 1995). Additionally, studies tend to focus on only some intonation patterns such as wh- questions and yes-no questions, leaving other patterns which are as important unexplored. Thus, a research gap is generated. This study aims to narrow that gap by means of exploring the effectiveness of the teaching of intonation to Spanish-speaking trainee teachers at a Chilean university. The study focuses on a less familiar intonation pattern, that of utterances which express implied information, namely, implications. The study involved 9 participants (3 males, and 6 females) who were in the process of becoming English teachers and who were enrolled in an English phonetics course. All participants took a pre-test followed by a four-session intervention on the intonation of English implications and a post-test which involved the reading of 29 prompts. In order to compare pre- and post-test results, a Wilcoxon signed-ranked test was run. The results drawn from the non-parametric test revealed that the participants were able to perform English intonation for implications better after having received training (Mdn=22) than before the treatment (Mdn=11), Z=-2,668, p=0,008.
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