Perception And Production Of EFL Intonation In Context By The Speakers Of Tone(Chinese) And Intonation(Russian) Languages

Intonation is an indispensable part of a language that is why its mastery is highly desirable for the learners of any language,especially for those at a relatively advanced level.However,the appropriate use of intonation of English as a foreign language(EFL)is an obstacle that most learners fail to overcome.Inappropriate use of intonation might preclude successful communication,which is the ultimate purpose of why people use language.Misunderstandings due to the use of the wrong intonation may even lead to negative evaluation and discrimination.The studies of the intonational disambiguation of discourse prove that intonation is an important source of information for sentence comprehension,in a wide range of discourse situations.At present,there is a lack of research on the effect of the mother tongue transfer on the English intonation perception and production as well as the teaching of the EFL intonation to the NSs of tone and intonation languages.This paper examined the perception(recognition and understanding of the meaning)and production of the contextualised EFL intonation by the two upper-intermediate EFL speakers of tone(Chinese)and two upper-intermediate EFL speakers of intonation(Russian)languages(one Russian student had previously taken the English intonation course).The study consisted of six speaking classes that corresponded to the study of a different English intonation feature in discourse: Prominence,Falling,Rising and Falling-Rising Tones,Low Key and High Key.At the beginning of each class,the students were briefly introduced to the meaning of the feature.Thereafter,they had to listen to the conversation between the NSs of English and answer the questions(Perception Test).Perception Tests were meant to answer the question whether the speakers of tone and intonation languages understand and recognise EFL intonation in context in the same way.After Perception Test,the students were given a situation and the two Production Pre-Tests were tape-recorded: first using students' mother tongue and then English.Next,the facilitator carried out intonation awareness-raising activities that introduced the form and meaning of the intonational feature as well as exposed students to the exercises to practice using it.The last stage of the speaking class was Production Post-Test.Participants were asked to use the same conversation as in the Production Pre-Test and pay attention to the implementation of the intonational feature when interacting with the partner.There was also a Delayed Production Post-Test after a two-month break to see if the intonation awareness-raising activities resulted in improvement of students' oral performance.The results of perception tests showed the EFL learners have problems with perception of shortened chunks of conversation.Analysis of Prominence Perception Test evidences the fact that the NSs of both language groups(tone and intonation)were able to infer the correct meaning of the prominent words from the context.On the other hand,recognition of prominence was not an easy task to handle for the NSs of both groups of languages,which could mean that the ability of the recognition of words that are given more stress within an utterance does not inherently depend on which mother tongue the learner speaks.The evidence that the participant who had prior English intonation training outperformed other students favours the fact that explicit teaching of English intonation helps EFL learners to recognise intonation contours better.The general performance of Russian NSs in the Tone Perception Test was better than the one of Chinese NSs'.However,these findings should not be only explained by the positive mother tongue transfer,since in each mother tongue group(Russian and Chinese),some students performed better and worse.It was supposed that the distinction of the groups of mother tongues and English language could become a reason for better or worse performance,but the results of production and perception test implied that the success in intonational performance rather lies in the learner's individual characteristics.The intonation awareness-raising activities have been proven effective in improving EFL speakers' prosodic pragmatic competence and reducing foreign accent.It was also revealed,that when the EFL learners communicate with the NSs of different mother tongue,they tend to change their intonational features and in such inter-lingual communication they achieve more native-like production of English intonation.The results of the production test in Praat revealed that even if the mother tongues of the participants had the same intonational features,which matched forms and functions of the ones of English,it did not always lead to the target-like English production,until the English intonation feature was introduced explicitly at the intonation awareness-raising activities.What is more,all the participants improved their ability to use EFL intonation to communicate the intended meaning after the speaking classes.These findings confirmed the necessity to teach intonation to the EFL learners.As a result of teaching,observation and analysis,the study reports the peculiarities of perception and production of English intonation by Chinese and Russian NSs,and emphasises the importance of EFL intonation teaching for improvement of learners' information understanding and output.