Prominent in English Teaching for
Taiwan EFL Learning
指導教授:鍾榮富
M97C0209 Shana
M97C0101 Carrie
Chapter One Introduction
•
Statement of the Problem
1. Teaching of pronunciation be integrated :
drillings of individual sounds  use of discourse intonation
in contexts.
2. Previous studies shown the contradictory results :
a)No apparent relationship to pronunciation ability (Suter, 1976)
b) Not really have beneficial effects of gaining the mimicry
ability of L2 utterances (Neufeld, 1988)
3. Very little evidence exists :
Specific topic of sentence prominence might be beneficial for
nonnative speakers from distant tone-language background
Research Question
1.
What prosody features characterize the Chinese EFL
learners’ sentence prominence in English connected
speech?
2.
Would the Chinese EFL learners, with informed
practice, be able to improve their production of
English sentence prominence?
3.
What difficulties might the Chinese EFL learners
have in approximation of target-like sentence
prominence in English connected speech?
Purpose of the Study
-this study can provide an empirically-derived basis
for a refinement of pedagogical and methodological
approach to pronunciation and prosody instruction
and research.
•
Definition of terms
1.
Stress and Prominence (from A Dictionary of Linguistics
& Phonetics)
Stress : the degree of force used in producing a syllable
Prominence: the degree to which a sound or syllable stands
out from others in its ENVIRONMENT (Crystal, 2003)
2.
Sentence Stress =tonic stress or unmarked cases
(Katamba,1997)
Tonic stress goes on the syllable which carries primary
word stress in the last lexical item of the tone unit. (eg.
noun, adjective ,verb…)
Stress placement  new information  speaker wishes to
highlight
3.
Contrastive/Emphatic Stress =marked cases
(Katamba,1997)
In marked cases, the speaker places prominence
to fall on grammatical (function) words, (eg.
pronoun, preposition, conjunction)
contrastive stress  non-final lexical items  the
speaker wishes to draw attention on such word
Example 1 Q: Is Joan studying FRENCH or GERMAN?
•
A: Joan is studying French ˊAND German.
Example 2 Q: Did you speak to Mr. ´BROWN?
•
A: No, I spoke to ´MRS. Brown
4.
Thought Group/Intonation Unit (Celce-Murcia,
1996)
To segment the speech into smaller units to locate the
prominence. This small unit is called thought
group/intonation unit.
It not only forms a semantically and grammatically
coherent segment of discourse, but also has its own
intonation contour or pitch pattern
Unit boundary 
a.) punctuation mark (eg. comma, period, dash…ect)
b.) a pause ( speakers produce fewer break )
 get the audience’s better attention
Chapter Two Literature Review
•
Prosodic feature = intonation + rhythm
a) Intonation= ‘melodic movement’
 the rise and fall in pitch
b) rhythm = ‘beat’ of the language
 gives it an organization in time
Prosodic System in English
1. English = intonation language + stress-timed rhythm
2. Syntactically (Ladefoged ,2001)
a.) Completion of a grammatical unit or noninterrogative sentences
 FALLING pitch
b.) Incomplete utterances or interrogative sentences
 RISING pitch
3. Semantically
The tonic syllable of an intonation phrase or contour has
significant influence on the meaning of the utterance. (to
emphasis information)
4. Four different factors are important: loudness, length, pitch,
vowel quality. (Roach ,2004),
Prosodic System in Chinese
1. Chinese = tone language + syllable-timed rhythm
2. Structure = CV sequence (Ladefoged, 2001) + Four tones
(Chao, 1948).
Factors Influencing Prosody Acquisition
1. Transfer (+,-) (Odlin, 1989)
-the influence resulting from the similarities and
differences between the target language and any other
language that has been previous acquired
2. Age of acquisition (Han, 2005)
-Whether adults can ever acquire native-like
competence in a second language or for children who
start learning at a relatively early age. (p.219)
-Proficiency of the earlier L2 learner > the later L2 learner
(e.g. Dekeyse, 2000; Johnson and Newport, 1989; Patkowski, 1980).
Factors Influencing Classroom
Pronunciation Learning
• Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin (1996)
– (1) the learner: age, exposure to the target
language, the amount and type of prior
pronunciation instruction, and aptitude, attitude
and motivation
– (2) the role of the native language.
Pronunciation and Prosody Teaching
Research
• Few focused specifically on suprasegmental, such as
Hahn’s study (2002) of the primary phrase stress,
suggesting the need of classroom research in this
area.
• Major research designs were experimental,
quantitative approach. Very few qualitative studies
were reported, such as Chang’s (2006) case study.
Chapter Three Method
3.1 Setting and Participants
Table 3.1 Profiles of the eight subjects
Subject
(N=8)
Sex
AOL a
KSP b
NEI c
Liu
M
4 yrs
No
Yes
Applied Foreign Languages
Zhang
M
5 yrs
No
Yes
Information Science
Hsieh
M
10 yrs
No
No
Engineering
Jian
M
10 yrs
No
No
Chemistry
Li
M
12 yrs
No
No
Private High School
Guo
M
12 yrs
No
No
Engineering
Chen
M
13 yrs
No
No
Technology Control
Lin
M
13 yrs
No
No
Technology Control
a
EB d
Subject self-reported onset age of learning English (AOL; in years)
b Subject self-reported knowledge of English sentence prominence (KSP; yes or no)
c Subject self-reported experience with native English instructor (NEI)
d Subject self-reported high school education background
3.2.1 The Training Materials-1
• Developed by the investigator or taken from
pronunciation textbooks.
• Some single sentences and short passages for reading
aloud form the local standard test: General English
Proficiency Test.
• On-line materials with MP3 audio increase students’
exposure to the real English and served as critical
listening tasks.
3.2 Equipment and Materials
• 3.2.1 The Training Materials
• 3.2.2 The Assessment Materials
• 3.2.3 Training Design and Procedures
3.2.1 The Training Materials-2
• The Special English of Voice of America (VOA) was
one of the beneficial supplements as ear-training,
self-monitor and correction.
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish
• Pronunciation computer software called
Connected Speech practice phases from time to
time.
3.2.2 The Assessment Materials
• A short story (Pronunciation Pre- and Post- Test)
• The Pre-test questionnaire was designed to learn subject’s
background and experience with pronunciation and
intonation learning and their knowledge of sentence focus
(prominence).
•
The Post-test questionnaire asked students’ responses to
the prominence training
Pronunciation Pre- and Post- Test
Class:___________ No:_________ Name:______________
I. Story Reading Aloud (期初 & 期末英文故事朗讀)
Direction:
Tell the story as naturally as you can. Please read silently and practice several times before recording.
When you are ready, try to finish it in ONE minute. You can make as many recordings as you want.
Submit ONE best copy to your instructor.
Two friends went for a walk. On the road they saw a purse. There were a cell phone, some credit
cards, and a lot of money in it. One of the girls picked it up. ‘Look! I got a purse full of money,’ she
said and put it in her pocket. Don’t say “I”, say “We”,’ said her friend. ‘It is our purse, not yours.’ ‘No,’
said her friend. ‘I saw it first, so it is my purse and I am going to keep it.’ Shortly afterwards the
people who had lost the purse came up with them, and the girl who found it, said ‘Oh, dear!’ ‘What
shall we do?’ ‘Don’t say “we”, say “I”,’ said her friend. ‘You picked up the purse, didn’t you?’
(adapted from Howe, 2000)
1.The genre of text was narrative story
II. Story and Word Lists Reading Aloud in2.Monosyllabic,
Chinese (期初中文故事與單字朗讀)
Bi-syllabic, Tri-syllabic
(1) 有兩個朋友在散步的路上看見了一個錢包，錢包裡面有一隻手機、幾張信用卡還有很多錢。
3.All of the sentences were of falling
其中一個女生把這個錢包撿起來，她說：「嘿，我撿到一個錢包裡面都是錢耶！」說著，她就
把錢包放進自己的口袋。她的朋友說，不是「你的」，應該說，
是「我們的！」
intonation contours,
including這是「我們的」
one WH錢包，不是「妳的」錢包。「不！」，是我先看到這個錢包的，所以這是我的錢包，而且我要
question.
把它佔為己有。過一會兒，遺失錢包的人朝她們的方向走了過來。
撿到錢包的那個女孩說：「喔！天呀！我們該怎麼辦呢？」 她的朋友說，不是「我們」該怎麼
辦，應該說 「妳」該怎麼辦。是妳撿到那個錢包的，不是嗎？
(2) 散步、 錢包、手機、信用卡、佔為己有
Pre-Treatment Questionnaire
•
•
•
•
Class: _______ No:______Name:____________
Sex:
 Male
 Female
Age: __________________ years old
What is your native language/mother tongue? _______________
•
•
•
•
MY Background: I began to study English when I was __________ years old at
(put a check )
 Kindergarten  Cram school before going to the elementary school
 Elementary Grades 1-4
 Elementary Grades 5-6
 Junior high Grade 7
•
MY English language experience: Please tell me about your experience in learning SPOKEN English.
(You may answer these questions in Chinese if you like.)
•
a. What is the most difficult part when it comes to speaking English? Pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary,
grammar or some personal problems like being too shy to talk?
•
b. When did you start learning speaking skill in English? How did you learn it? (For example, talking or
listening to native English speakers/teachers?)
•
c. When did you first become aware that English had prominence (focus) and intonation (pitch ups and
downs) differences with Chinese? Do you think your L1 (Chinese) has an effect on your L2 (English)
pronunciation and intonation?
•
d. Did any English teacher ever help you learn the correction pronunciation (vowels and consonants) and
appropriate intonation (smooth pitch changes) of English? In what ways do you think your pronunciation
has been improved over the past semester? What else do you need to work on? [NOTE: we learned
vowels/some consonants; chunking skills, and rising/falling intonation patterns, and reading aloud skills]
Post-Treatment Questionnaire
•
•
Class:______No:_______ Name:____________
Please answer the following questions, telling your experience in learning
FOCUS words. Put a check on the box that show your experience before
and after taking Focus training.
Questions
1. I know how to highlight important
words in sentences to help the listener
better understand what I said. Which
strategies do you use most?
2. I always listen to native speakers
speaking English (e.g. Audio CDs, radio
programs, online VOA special
English, etc.)
3. Reading aloud is one way I use to
improve my spoken English.
4. I have ever recorded my own voice to
monitor speech accuracy.
5. I think marking the stress words before
listening helps me become aware of how
Americans say the most important words.
6. I can find the stress words by myself
before reading aloud tasks.
Before
Yes  No 
我強調單字最常用的語音策略:
Pitch height 音調提高 ___
Loudness 音量加大 ___
Lengthening 母音延長 ___
Others其他:____________
Yes  No 
If yes, how often? _________hours per
week.
Yes  No 
If yes, how often?
_________hours per week.
Yes  No 
If yes, how often?
_________hours per week.
---------
After
Yes  No 
我強調單字最常用的語音策略:
Pitch height 音調提高 ___
Loudness 音量加大 ___
Lengthening 母音延長 ___
Others其他:____________
Yes  No 
If yes, how often?
_________hours per week.
Yes  No 
If yes, how often?
_________hours per week.
Yes  No 
If yes, how often?
_________hours per week.
Yes  No
Yes  No 
If yes, what is your correct marking rate?
About ______ % correct
7. (i) Do you like to record your own voice and monitor your speech? Is recording a new experience for you? Do you think it’s helpful
for you to improve your pronunciation?
(ii) Do you feel more confident in speaking English because of having better pronunciation?
3.3 Training Design and Procedures
• Three phases: pre-test, training, and post-test.
• 8-week training for students
(1) to comprehend and produce the sentence stress and
contrastive/emphatic stress in English
(2) to perform the prosody of prominence associated with
the sentence stress and contrastive/emphatic stress
(3) to empower the ability to monitor one’s own speech
when focusing on phonological form.
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
1
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Orientation;
Stress-timed
vs.
Syllable-timed
Languages
Explain the 8-week training sessions and
goals
Prosody strategy:
Rhythm in English and in Chinese;
review chunking (intonation unit/thought
group/pauses), oral reading rate, and pitch
range
].
•
In the first part of the semester (week 1 to week 8), the students learned
word stress, pausing in longer sentences and short stories, and pitch
change in simple rising and falling intonation patterns
Topic 1: Syllable-timed vs. Stress-timed Languages
‘Pro-nun-ci-a-tion- i-sim-por-tant’
(Chen, C., Fan, C., & Lin, H., 1997, p.190)
•
To explain the different rhythmic features of English (stress-timed) with Chinese,
which is generally referred to as syllable-timed language
•
Chinese version was represented by a line of soldiers following one another at rather
regular intervals.
•
English version was represented by a series of family members, The underlined
boldfaced syllables –a- and -por- were adults in the sentence, representing the two
primary stressed syllables
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
2
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Content Words
vs.
Function Words
General Stress Rule
Predicting stressed and unstressed
words
Prosody strategy:
Perform word stress in content
words and schwa in high-frequency
function words
General Stress Rule
• Content words
– Stressed (emphasized) by adding extra length to
their stressed syllables
– Function words are left unstressed (de-emphasized)
by always reducing the vowel of the unstressed
words.
• Schwa sound [ə] in high-frequency function words
– ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘and’, ‘of’, ‘or’, ‘the’, ‘to’, and ‘for’
– Students worked on critical listening skills, practiced
and produced stressed words and weak forms in
controlled mode.
Topic 2: Content vs. Function Words
(Prator,1986, pp.31-32; Celce-Murcia,1996, p.153)
HOWEVER, they are stressed
(i)
When they come at the end of a sentence: I
(ii) When they are used in tag questions: All
thought he was
movies
aren’t
smarter than he
made in
Hollywood,
is.
are they?
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
3
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Sentence Stress
and
Weak Forms
Sentence Stress Rule
(last content word)
Critical listening to English rhythm
Prosody strategy:
Perform phrase-final vowellengthening; common expressions;
schwa in high-frequency function words
Sentence Stress Rule
• Stress the last content word in each thought group. The
stressed word should sound longer and have higher pitch than the
other words in the utterance.
• For example, the paragraph looked like this
(the hyphens were the pause marks):
Let me tell you about - my experience as a house father - when
my children were very small - I stayed at home - while their
mother - went to the university - during this time -I learned a lot
of new skill.
• A pause was marked between the subject and predicate, and to
segment the speech into smaller unites which was called
‘intonation unit / thought group’.
Topic 3: Sentence Stress and Weak Forms-1
• Students tap the desk in 4 beats for each stressed word as they
say the first sentence.
• In order to get a good rhythm, students had to learn to squeeze
some words, in this case, ‘and, ‘then’ and ‘it’s’.
Topic 3: Sentence Stress and Weak Forms-2
Students were asked to
add some familiar expressions
to the list and to record.
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
4
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Sentence Stress
and
Tonic Syllables
Sentence Stress Rule
(stress shift)
Sentence stress and utterance meanings
Prosody strategy:
Review word stress; perform high pitch
accent on tonic syllable; schwa in highfrequency function words
Topic 4: Sentence Stress and Tonic Syllables
•
While listening, the students filled out a Prominence Strategy SelfEvaluation Form.
•
Stress shift: the use of stress timing could help communicate different
meaning.
Topic 4: Prominence Strategy Self-Evaluation Form
(句子中強調字彙使用之語音聲韻策略自我評量表)
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
5
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Contrast
and
Emphasis (1)
Contrastive/Emphatic Stress Rule
(correction)
Prosody strategy:
Perform extra high pitch accent and stress
some structure words
Contrastive/Emphatic Stress Rule
• Stress the word to make correction, show contrast or
emphasize new information. The stressed word should
sound longer and have extra higher pitch than the
other words in the utterance.
• One simple exercise to demonstrate the
contrastive/emphatic stress
A: WHAT do you DO?
B: I’m a STUDENT. WHAT do YOU DO?
A: I WORK in a POST OFFICE.
Topic 5: Contrast and Emphasis (1)
Topic 5: Contrast and Emphasis (1)
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
6
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Contrast
and
Emphasis (2)
Contrastive/Emphatic Stress Rule
(short sentences & passages)
Prosody strategy:
Perform extra high pitch accent and stress
contrast words
Topic 5: Contrast and Emphasis (2)
Students need to think where the
placement of prominence would
be before reading aloud.
Topic 5: Contrast and Emphasis (2)
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
7
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Sentence
Prominence
and
Intonation
Using sentence stress, contrastive/emphatic
stress, compound nouns and list intonation
Prosody strategy:
Expand pitch range and use attitudinal and
emotional intonation
Topic 6: Sentence Prominence and Intonation
].
Weekly schedules and training course outline
Session
8
Topic
Content and Prosody Strategies
Review
Discussion
Reflections
Review on the four topics
Problems and Solutions Sharing
Post-test Recording;
Survey Questionnaires
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis
• T1 data: Eight male Chinese speakers did the oral
reading task in English before instruction
T2 data: the same story reading right after the
instruction.
• Two male English-speaking models recorded for
target-likeness comparison.
• The qualitative data including questionnaires, weekly
learning logs, and observation analysis of their
prominence perception and production in practice and
production phases.
Chapter Four Results
1. Sentence Stress Analysis (H*)
-Measure the placement: in non-contrastive context and the duration
measurements of the vowels in the last content words in utterance-final
and non-utterance-final position
-The result : a positive improvement of a 26% increase for H* pattern in
sentence stress from Time 1(pre-test) (9%) to Time 2(post-test) (37%)
Comparison between T1 and T2 in vowel duration ratios &
target-likeness in sentence stress
-The result : One(13%) --> Six (75%) subjects’ production was evaluated
as target-like(T2)
-Topic reset = Readers start a new paragraph by using an especially high pitch
at the beginning of the first sentence.
S1 ‘Two friends went for a walk’
S7 ‘What shall we DO?’.
2. Contrastive/Emphatic Stress Analysis (L+H*)
-Measure the placement: contrastive/emphatic stress and the duration
measurements of vowels in contrastive/emphatic words
-The result : a significant improvement of a 40% accurate increase for
L+H* pattern in contrastive/emphatic stress from Time 1 (0%) to Time 2
Comparison between T1 and T2 in vowel duration ratios &
target-likeness in contrasive/emphatic stress
-The result : One (13%) --> five (63%) subjects’ production was evaluated
as target-like, Liu, Zhang, Jian, Chen, and Li
S5 ‘Don’t say “I”, /say “WE”.
S7 ‘What shall we DO?’
3. Questionnaire Analysis (Three categories)
a. The first category : subjects’ starting age of
English learning.
-Young Starters had better prosodic
awareness than that of the Later Starters
b. The second category :subjects’ awareness of L1 and
L2 pronunciation difference
-Young Starters took advantage of native English
teachers in speaking more English and obtaining
pronunciation help
-Later Starters seldom had to speak English and
therefore they did not receive teachers’ help with
pronunciation (focus on vocabulary and reading)
C. The third category : subjects’ reactions to the prominence
instruction
- According to the survey, young Starters were more confident with
placing stress on focus words than the Later Starters
- Young Starters benefited from the familiarity of reading aloud task and
past speaking experience
- A positive responses to the training of prominence strategy use to
stress focus words (see below)
★ Higher pitch(46%) > Longer vowel(29%) > Intuition (14%)
Chapter Five Discussion & Implication
* Response RQ1Chinese EFL learners displayed very small pitch differences
between the stressed prominent words and the neighboring
less stressed or unstressed words in the thought groups + very
few productions of extended vowel duration of the
prominent words either in sentence stress context or in
contrastive/emphatic context
* Response RQ2- A substantial improvement in
prominence production from Time 1 to Time 2
* Response RQ3- no significant difference in learning
prominence in the two contexts introduced, but more
difficulties in approximation of pitch height than in vowel
duration
Limitations
1.
The quasi-experimental study was limited in that it
was a report of selected learners receiving specific
prominence instruction in part of a regular college
pronunciation class
2.
Subjects were a small number of 8 male students
from the same L1 background and the control group was
limited to two English-speaking models
3.
The variable of the prosodic feature of intensity
was not examined, and a few variables were controlled,
such as gender, speech rate, and intonation
Thanks for your listening.