Presentation

Discourse Intonation in L2 Academic Presentations: A Pilot Study

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Abstract

Intonation is an important cue to the organization of oral discourse, being used by first language (L1) English speakers to signal topic shifts and relationships among parts of speech (Wennerstrom, 1994, 1998). This pilot study investigated how four second language (L2) graduate students’ use of intonation as an organizational device developed naturalistically during their first six months immersed in an L2 environment. The participants were recorded delivering four short presentations at approximately two- month intervals. The recordings were analyzed for two features: paratones (extra high pitch at the beginning of a new discourse topic) and mid-utterance pitch boundaries (which should indicate the connection between phrases with non-low pitch). Two presentations given by native English speakers were also analyzed for comparison. Overall, the L2 participants adequately produced non-low pitch boundaries within utterances, but their F0 peaks at topic shifts were considerably less prominent than those observed in the native-speaker data. Three participants’ use of intonation changed over time, either improving on the features analyzed or displaying a U-shaped pattern of development.

How to Cite:

Buss, L., Cardoso, W. & Kennedy, S., (2014) “Discourse Intonation in L2 Academic Presentations: A Pilot Study”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 6(1).