Recast And Clarification Request On Intonation Acquisition Of English Yes-no Questions In Chinese English-majors

Intonation is pitch variation across sentences, which is the key prosodicfeature of English. English and Chinese belong to different intonation systems,with English being an intonation language and Chinese a tone language. ChineseEFL learners’ inappropriate use of intonation or insensitive perception of intonationmay lead to communication failure. In language teaching, English teachers usuallyfocus on grammatical accuracy, and tend to ignore the importance and significanceof intonation. Therefore, the present study compares the effects of two types ofcorrective feedback (recast and clarification request) on intonation acquisition ofEnglish yes-no questions in Chinese English-majors.The present study mainly focuses on two questions:1) What are the differences between the Chinese English majors and nativespeakers of American English concerning English yes-no questions intonation?2) Which is more effective on the acquisition of English yes-no questionsintonation, recast or clarification request?The subjects in the present study are30freshmen from a university inSouthern China, including15girls and15boys. All the subjects are randomlyassigned to three groups, namely the recast group, the clarification request groupand the control group. Each group has10subjects, including5boys and5girls.The study lasts about eight weeks, and a pre-test, six treatment sessions, animmediate post-test, and a delayed post-test are employed. And all the researchdata are collected by SONY ICD-UX533F.On the basis of Noticing Hypothesis and Interaction Hypothesis, as well as thequantitative and qualitative analysis of data, the results of the present study can beconcluded as follows:First, in terms of intonation of English yes-no questions, the Chinese EFLlearners had much shorter IPs than native speakers, and prominently, they mainlyrelied on pause to realize the boundaries between IPs; while instead of mainlydepending on pause, native speakers also adopt another acoustic cue a lot, namelypitch reset, to divide IP boundaries. What’s more, as for the tonicity, impropernucleus placement, especially unmarked nucleus placement, was prevailing inChinese EFL learners’ production. In addition, Chinese EFL learners were apt touse falling tones in the context where the native speakers tend to use rising tones.Second, as to the intonation acquisition of English yes-no questions, the two experimental groups, namely the metalinguistic group and the recast group, hadmuch more gains than the control group who receives no feedback; while as to thetwo experimental groups, the subjects in the recast group had much moreimprovement than the subjects in the metalinguistic group.On the basis of the above conclusions, some effective and efficientpedagogical implications for English intonation teaching and learning are provided.Firstly, English teachers should lay emphasis on intonation teaching, and providesufficient authentic input; secondly, teachers should offer appropriate and effectivecorrective feedback so as to develop students’ intonation awareness; thirdly,computer-based acoustic analysis software such as Praat is highly recommended soas to provide EFL learners with visualization of intonation patterns and facilitateEnglish intonation learning.