An Experimental Study Of Teaching English Intonation To Junior-high Students With Praat

English intonation has long been neglected in middle school classrooms.And Chinese EFL learners are stilling learning English intonation by imitating the target model,which requires demanding listening discrimination skills.Praat,a visualization tool can help the learners compensate their inadequacy in this aspect.A 6-week experiment involving six Grade 9 students was conducted to see how Praat could help the students with their English intonation acquisition.The research aims at answering the following questions:First,do the participants improve their intonation production after practice with Praat,if any?Their intonation production will be analyzed in further dimensions,namely,1.Do they chunk their utterances into IPs more correctly?2.Doe they locate nucleuses more correctly?3.Do their intonation patterns approximate to the native speakers'?Second,what are the participants' attitudes towards the English intonation and the instructional technique,Praat?More specifically,1.Do these participants think that they have improved their intonation production accuracy after the teaching intervention?2.How do these participants perceive the instruction of teaching English intonation with Praat?Findings of the pretest correspond to results and conclusions by many other researchers.In terms of tonality pattern,the participants produced too many redundant IPs and their IP length is much shorter than the native speaker's.The participants paused more than the native speaker.But their pause duration is much shorter,which means they couldn't use pause to heighten important information.With respect to tonicity patterns,the participants produced too many nucleuses which made their prominence out of focus.And they tend to accent function words as well.As with tone patterns,the participants overused falling tones and didn't like to use rising tone.And their pitch range is narrower than the native speaker.After six weeks' teaching sessions,the results are presented as follows:First of all,the participants showed more accuracy in intonation production.In terms of tonality,the participants produced fewer IPs,and each IP contained more words,which made their speech sound more fluent.The participants also paused less often.But their pause duration hasn't changed much compared to that in the pretest.This means the participants still had difficulty using pause to heighten important information.As with tonicity patterns,the participants could make decisions about nucleus placement more correctly and there is a sharp decrease in the redundant accents,as a result of the decrease in IPs.The participants stopped to accent function words with only several rare exceptions.However,the participants still have much difficulty stressing compound words which requires language instructors' further efforts.In terms of tone patterns,the participants used rising tone more often than before and their rising tones were more natural.The participants increased their pitch range,which gave much more prominence to the words they want to accent.Second,the participants developed positive attitudes and perceptions towards English intonation and Praat.All participants reported increased understanding of the English intonation system.The participants also found Praat helpful and interesting.They thought that Praat helped them understand English intonation and learning English intonation with Praat was by no means frustrating.This study has the following pedagogical implications:First,English teachers should first raise the students' intonation awareness.If the students haven't realized the importance of intonation,they are sure to speak as they like and make a lot of mistakes.In my opinion,visualization tools like Praat have the instructional potential to raise the students' awareness.Secondly,due attention must be paid to tonality and tonicity patterns.Traditionally,intonation instruction mainly focuses on tone patterns,which hasn't yielded much effectiveness.Proper tonality and tonicity patterns pave the way for proper tone patterns.Thirdly,we should always practice in context.Context facilitates intonation instruction and acquisition.Isolated sentences out of context make intonation instruction and acquisition harder.Last but not least,teachers' guidance can't be spared.Visualization may be useless by itself without careful guidance from teachers.The perceptual ability of the junior high students has not been developed sufficiently and they often have difficulty with the perception of intonation.