A Study Of The Intonation Patterns Of English Object Clauses In Chinese EFL Learners’ Oral Reading

This thesis carries out a study of the intonation patterns of the English objectclauses by comparing Chinese EFL learners’ production of the intonations with theEnglish native speakers’ counterparts. The present study has divided the subjects intotwo groups: an experimental group (24Chinese EFL learners) and a control group (5native speakers). The experimental group consists of24Chinese EFL learners,including12junior undergraduate college students (6females and6males) and12graduates (all females). The control group consists of5native speakers of English (3females and2males) who are postgraduate students in America. Two of them arefrom Illinois, and the others come from New York, Wisconsin and Michigan. The datacollection procedures are divided into three stages: recording, cutting and drawingpitch graphs. What’s more, all these three processes are later analyzed using Praat.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter1is a brief introduction, includingmotivation and significance of the study, organization of the thesis, and the theoreticalframework of the thesis. Chapter2focuses on the survey of intonation and relatedprevious studies. A general introduction to intonation is presented firstly, including itsdefinition and functions. Furthermore, previous studies of both foreign and ChineseEFL learners’ intonation are reviewed. Chapter3presents the methodology of thisstudy. Research questions, subjects, reading materials, instruments, and datacollection procedures are presented in succession. Chapter4, the main part of thethesis, reveals the research findings and discussion. In this chapter, findings from thestudy of intonation patterns of English object clauses in both Chinese EFL learners’and native speakers’ oral readings are presented at length. Chapter5is the conclusionin which the author presents the major findings and conclusion as well as limitationsand suggestions of this study.The present thesis mainly deals with the following questions:1) What are thecharacteristics of intonation of different sentence patterns with object clausesproduced by Chinese EFL learners?2) What are the characteristics of intonation ofdifferent sentence patterns with object clauses produced by English native speakers?3) What are the similarities and differences between the characteristics of intonation ofdifferent sentence patterns with object clauses produced by Chinese EFL learners andthose produced by native speakers of English?The findings of this research are:1) The intonations of complex sentencesproduced by Chinese subjects in the experimental group are often influenced by thesentence type of object clauses. Same speakers may adopt different intonation patternswhen reading complex sentences containing the same type of main clause butdifferent types of object clauses.2) There is little difference in intonation when thesame native speaker reads sentences containing the same type of main clause butdifferent types of object clauses.There are some limitations in the present study. First, there are five nativespeakers of English in the control group, the number of which is less than that of thesubjects in the experimental group. Second, the twelve sentences in reading materialsare not in a context, which makes this study only focus on intonation contours. Withregard to limitations mentioned above, in the future studies, the author will find morenative speakers as subjects and collect sentences to be discussed from dialogues orarticles so that both intonation contours and functions of them can be taken intoconsideration.