The Effectiveness of the Instruction of the Intonation of English Implications to L1 Spanish Trainee Teachers

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 foursession intervention on the intonation of English implications and a post-test which involved the reading of 29 prompts. In order to compare pre-and posttest 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.