A Study Of Focus Realization In Chinese EFL Learners’ Oral Discourse

Focus is the most prominent part within an intonation group, which usually holds the main burden of message. As an important prosodic feature in intonation, the quality of focus realization directly affects the exchange of information in discourse. The present study aimed to find out how focus was realized in Chinese EFL learners’ discourse, and based on the analysis of three variables of pitch, duration and intensity, the intonation group was divided into three temporal areas of pre-focus, on-focus and post-focus areas to explore focus realization.In this research, 25 English major graduates(20 female and 5 male) were recruited as subjects. The experimental materials were composed of two parts, the first part was designed to explore broad focus realization in Chinese EFL learners’ discourse, which contained 10 different types of sentences including statements, exclamations, and questions. Subjects were asked to read each sentence one by one directly. The second part of the materials was designed to explore how narrow focus was realized in Chinese EFL learners’ discourse, which was made up of 10 prompt questions and 10 corresponding target sentences. Subjects were asked to use the target sentences as answers to prompt questions that ask about specific pieces of information available in the target sentences. The experiment was conducted with the application of the recording software Cool Edit 2.1, which were then annotated with the annotation software ProsodyPro.praat, and finally the relevant data was collected and analyzed with Microsoft Excel 2003 software.Through the analysis and discussion about focus realization in Chinese EFL learners’ discourse, the results revealed that in both broad focus and narrow focus conditions, the focus was not as prominent as that in native speakers’ discourse. In Chinese EFL learners’ neutral sentences, comparable pitch range and similar mean f0 were found in pre-focus, on-focus and post-focus areas in the aspect of pitch analysis, and in terms of duration analysis, the broad focus had a comparatively longer duration than unfocused items in the same sentence, but with regard to intensity analysis, the intensity of on-focus was not higher than that of pre-focus and post-focus. In Chinese EFL learners’ narrow focus sentences, the on-focus realization was achieved by expanding on-focus pitch range, suppressing the post-focus pitch range and leaving the pre-focus pitch range largely intact, which was in accordance with native speakers’ narrow focus realization, but the difference was that neither the expansion of on-focus pitch range nor the compression on post-focus pitch range was as great as that in natives speakers’ narrow focus realization. And in the duration analysis, the duration of on-focus was also longer than the unfocused items in the same sentence. Besides, in the intensity analysis, the intensity in on-focus area was comparatively higher than that in the other two temporal areas.The present study explored the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners’ focus realization from an overall perspective, which not only concentrated on the prosodic features in on-focus realization but also paid an attention to the prosodic features in pre-focus and post-focus realization so that a better reflection of the problems existed in focus realization in Chinese EFL learners’ discourse can be obtained. Therefore, the present study can provide guidance for teachers’ teaching and students’ learning of English intonation.