A Study Of Chinese EFL Learners’ English Intonation Patterns In Read Speech

English intonation, as a crucial element of communication, is central to conveythe information and clear up ambiguities as well as indicating the speaker’s attitude.In the study of Chinese learners’ pronunciation, most focus on the comparison ofintonational systems between Chinese and English to predict or explain the problemswhich researchers perceived, but empirical date are absent.On the basis of Halliday’s3T (Tonality, Tonicity, and Tone) system, acomparison study was conducted between40Chinese EFL learners from differenteducational level and10natives in their productions embedded in a short passage.With the application of the computer software Cool Editor, Praat and SPSS, acousticanalysis and correlation analysis the study explores the intonational patterns ofChinese EFL learners. At last, this thesis pointed out the meaning of this research forthe teaching and studying of English pronunciation and proposed the limitations andsuggestions of this research.The purpose of the study is to find out problems of Chinese EFL learners’English intonation patterns in their read speech. There are three aspects which areinvestigated what are the features of Chinese EFL learners’ tonality, tonicity and toneselection. Through comparing the performance of Chinese English learners andnatives the main findings are concluded as follows: In the respect of tonality, thenumber and duration of pauses in learners’ speech are more than native speakers.This not only clearly indicates the interlanguage features in the learning process, butalso reflects the influence of their mother language; In the respect of tonicity,improper nucleus placement is prevailing in Chinese EFL learners’ production. Thelexical items serving as unmarked tonicity are more scattered, which reflects thatlearners’ perception for important information in a tone group is weak. Nativespeakers locate the grammatical nucleus mainly on contrastive stresses or emphaticstresses while learners have high proportions placing those nucleus on personal pronouns; In the respect of tone，Chinese learners have a good command of basictone types, but they are confused in specific tone chosen.This research helps Chinese English learners a more precise recognition fortheir own pronunciation, and English teachers learn that teaching of segmentals is notthe whole of pronunciation teaching, what suprasegmental features could influencethe pronunciation level of Chinese English learners should also be valued.