Investigating the Impact of EFL Students’ Misuse of Prosodic Features on their Face-to-face Interactions from University Instructors’ Perspectives
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25079/ukhjss.v5n1y2021.pp50-64Keywords:
Intonation, Prosodic features, Stress, Syllable, Teaching/Learning Prosodies.Abstract
The present study aims at investigating the use of prosodic features by Kurdish EFL undergraduates in their face-to-face interactions inside/outside the classroom from the university instructors’ perspectives. The study hypothesizes that the majority of Kurdish EFL undergraduates are not fully aware of the fact that any misuse of prosodic features would probably affect the emotions, feelings, and attitudes that the face-to-face interaction is intended to convey. Building on an analysis of a questionnaire given to 54 university instructors at 10 Iraqi Kurdistan Region different universities, the study concludes that the majority of problems the students face can be related to the misuse of stress, intonation, and other prosodic features. Therefore, EFL instructors should pay more attention to make students learn how to use prosodic features and enable them to send messages adequately while engaging in face-to-face interactions. This would require special classes about prosodic features so that EFL students can overcome the misuse they have in face-to-face communication. This is inevitable because accuracy and fluency in communication require EFL students to master both features: segmental and suprasegmental. The reason behind this necessity could be attributed to the fact that broken and/or incorrect pronunciation can be considered as one of the most prominent factors behind misunderstandings in communication.
Downloads
References
Aitchison, J. (2010). Aitchison’s linguistics. UK: Hodder Headline.
Ambrose, S., Bridges, M., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. & Norman, M. (2010). How learning works: seven research-based principles for smart teaching. USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ashby, P. (2010). Understanding phonetics. UK: Hodder Education.
Ashby, M. & Maidment, J. (2005). Introducing phonetic science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Birjandi, P. & Salmani-Nodoushan, M. (2005). An introduction to phonetics. Tehran: Zabankadeh Publications.
Boitsova, E., Pyshkin, E., Takako, Y., Bogach, N., Lezhenin, I., Lamtev, A., & Diachkov, V. (2018). Study Intonation courseware kit for EFL prosody teaching. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiński & D. Śledziński (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 413-417). Poznan, Poland. doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-84
Boyer, S. (2001). Understanding English pronunciation: an integrated practice course. Australia: Boyer Educational Resources.
Busà, M. (2012). The role of prosody in pronunciation teaching: a growing appreciation. In M. Busà & A. Stella (Eds.), Methodological perspectives on second language prosody: papers from ML2P 2012 (pp. 101-105). Italy: Cleup Sc.: University of Padua.
Carr, Ph. (1993). Phonology. UK: The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Carr, Ph. (2013). English phonetics and phonology: an introduction. (2nd ed.). UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Carroll, D. W. (2008). Psychology of language. (5th ed.). USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Crystal, D. (1992). An encyclopedic dictionary of language and languages. UK: Blackwell Publishing LTD.
Crystal, D. (2003). The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: CUP.
Crystal, D. (2008). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Derwing, T. M. & Rossiter, M. J. (2002). ESL learners’ perceptions of their pronunciation needs and strategies. System, 30(2), 155-166. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0346-251X(02)00012-X
Dörnyei, Z. (2003). Questionnaires in second language research: construction, administration, and processing. USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Engwall, O. & Bälter, O. (2007). Pronunciation Feedback from Real and Virtual Language Teachers. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 20(3), 235-262.
Hirschfeld, U. & Trouvain, J. (2007). Teaching prosody in German as foreign language. In: Trouvain & U. Gut (eds.) Non-native prosody: phonetic description and teaching practice. (pp. 171-187). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG.
Hudson, G. (2000). Essential introductory linguistics. USA: Blackwell Publishers.
Kelly, G. (2000). How to teach pronunciation. England: Pearson Education Limited.
Kompe, R. (1997). Prosody in speech understanding systems. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Ladefoged, P. (2006). A course in phonetics. California: Thomson Wadsworth Corporation.
Lane, L. (2010). Tips for teaching pronunciation: a practical approach. NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
Lass, R. (1984). Phonology: an introduction to basic concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lehiste, I. (1996). Suprasegmental features of speech. In: N. J. Lass (ed.) Principles of experimental phonetics (pp. 226-244). Boston: Mosby.
Lengeris, A. (2012). Prosody and second language teaching: lessons from L2 speech perception and production research. In: J. Romero-Trillo (Ed.) Pragmatics and prosody in English language teaching. (pp. 25-40). NY: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-3883-6_3
Levis, J. M. (1999). Intonation in theory and practice, revisited. TESOL Quarterly, 33(1), 37-63.
Mary, L. (2019). Extraction of prosody for automatic speaker, language, emotion and speech recognition. (2nd ed.). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG.
Mennen, I. (2007). Phonological and phonetic influences in non-native intonation. In: Trouvain & U. Gut (eds.) Non-native prosody: phonetic description and teaching practice. (pp. 53-76). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG.
Matthews, P. H. (2007). The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. (2nd ed.). NY: Oxford University Press.
Nunan, D. (2013). What is this thing called language? (2nd ed.). UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ogden, R. (2012). Prosodies in conversation. In O. Niebuhr (ed.) Understanding prosody: the role of context, function and communication. (pp. 201-217). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Ricketts, D. (2014). Analysis of tasks and activities in ESL pronunciation books. (master’s thesis). University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada. Available from ERA: Education and Research Archive https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Q54M
Roach, P. (1991). English phonetics and phonology: a practical course. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roach, P. (2002). A little encyclopaedia of phonetics. Retrieved February 19, 2019 from http://web.t-online.hu/antekirt/files/encyc.pdf
Salaberry, M. R. (2001). The use of technology for second language learning and teaching: a retrospective. The Modern Language Journal, 85(1), 39-56.
Szczepek Reed, B. (2011). Analysing conversation: an introduction to prosody. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tench, P. (1996). The intonation systems of English. Cassell: London.
Verdugo, D. R. (2006) A study of intonation awareness and learning in non-native speakers of English, Language Awareness, 15(3), 141-159. doi: https://doi.org/10.2167/la404.0
Wells, J. C. (2006). English intonation: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weltens, B., & De Bot, K. (1984). Visual feedback of intonation II: feedback delay and quality of feedback. Language and Speech, 27(1), 79–88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/002383098402700106
Wu, Y. (2019). Review of Chinese English learners’ prosodic acquisition. English Language Teaching, 12(8), 89-94. doi: 10.5539/elt.v12n8p89
Yavaş, M. (2011). Applied English phonology. UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Yenkimaleki, M. & van Heuven, V. J. (2017). The effect of teaching prosody awareness on interpreting performance: an experimental study of consecutive interpreting from English into Farsi, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 26(1), 84-99. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1315824
Zhang, Y., Ding, H., Zelchenko, P., Cui, X., Lin, Y., Zhan, Y. & Zhang, H. (2018). Prosodic disambiguation by Chinese EFL learners in a cooperative game task. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiński & D. Śledziński (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 979-983). Poznan, Poland. doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-198
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).