A Study On Intonation And Visual Teaching Of English Learners In Yue And Wu Dialect Area

Based on Autosegmental-Metrical(AM)theory,an in-depth investigation on the intonation production and perception of L2 learners with Cantonese and Wu dialecal background will be conducted by using the experimental phonetics method.The relation between learners English production and perception,learners’ mother tongue influence imposed on learners’ production and perception will be discussed as well.On this basis,a visualized intonation teaching will be given to these learners for the purpose of improving their English intonation production.The main work and contributions of this research are listed below:(1)Learners of the two dialectal areas are studied in terms of their English production and perception.In their phonological presentation,learners with Cantonese background(CS)tend to realize English statements by H*L-L%and YN-questions by L*H-H%,similar to the English native speakers’(NS)representation.While learners with Wu background(WS)usually adopt H*L-L%and H*L-H%in the above two sentence types respectively;in addition,both learner groups are likely to realize the sentence-initial and sentence-medial focus correctly,whereas find it difficult to produce sentence-final and broad focus correctly.In phonetic realization CS focus realization are mainly represented by a less prominent nuclear accent,while some of the WS have their focus realization properly highlighted,and some of them even do this in a much exaggerated manner than NS.(2)Relation between perception and production are explored.It is noticed that nuclear accents in sentence-initial and medial position are easier for learners to perceive,and focus in these two positions are exactly those easy to be realized as nuclear accent.This finding is in line with SLM-r,which claims that perception and production develop hand in hand.While WS ’s inconsistency on the production and perception of nuclear accent type in YN-questions goes the opposite of SLM-r,but to some extent provide evidence for SLM,which indicates that the ability of production is acquired behind perception.(3)Learners’ mother tongue influence imposed on their English production is analyzed.It is known that Chinese pitch contour encodes tone and intonation simultaneous,which basically belongs to lexical and post-lexical level respectively.For this reason,it is no doubt that learners’ English will be influence by their mother tongue dialects.For the production of boundary tone,CS are easier to produce a H%in YN-question,as there is a fixed high target at the end of Cantonese intonation questions.No matter how their intonation declines in the sentence main part,it will meet a rising at the end.But this phenomenon is absent in Wu dialect,for which,WS for it hard to realize the boundary tone in YN-questions as H%.L%in English statements can be well produced by both learner groups,as this feature is a superposition in the statements of the two dialects.Comparing the phonetic realization of English intonation between the two learner groups,it is found that some of the WS do it well,as focus in their dialect is featured by PFC and pitch range expansion,while their CS counterparts fail to realize the focus in a prominent manner,as Cantonese mainly use duration lengthening in doing focus realization,leaving learners’ pitch level of English focus syllable remain unchanged compared with those in broad focus.(4)A pilot study of teaching experiment was designed,in which five different teaching methods were used to teach learners from Jianghuai dialectal areas,northern mandarin dialectal areas and Beijing dialectal areas.By the observation of learners’ pre and posttest data,a conclusion was drawn that the fifth teaching method,teaching with visualized intonation contour and after-training feedback,is the most effective one.(5)The fifth teaching method was then used in Cantonese dialectal area and Wu dialect area.The data elicited was annotated and analyzed.By the comparison of production between learners in control and experiment group,it was found that there was an interactive relationship between production and perception of L2 learners.By this method,the fossilized deviant features in either phonological or phonetic aspects can be removed to a large extent.(6)A learning and teaching intonation website was designed with 7 chapters.It was expected that by taking courses designed in this website,learners were able to establish intonation awareness,and able to be aware of the relationship between the intonation form and function.