Teaching intonation to general english learners some problems and recommendations

Chapter BACKGROUND Chapter figures out the thesis rationale and emphasizes the importance of intonation on communicative competence which Widdowson (1978: 67) asserted that acquisition of communicative competence is “the ultimate aim in language learning” Finally, it comprises the overall attitude toward English intonation teaching to GE learners 1.1 RATIONALE Intonation exists in many languages, so the concept of English intonation may not be new to learners of English However, they are often so busy finding their words that intonation could not get the right attention, yet intonation can be as important as word choice Intonation is also fundamental: in combination with changes in syllable duration and loudness, it plays a role in all aspects of speech For instance, intonation tells us how others feel towards us and towards the subject of the conversation (Chen and Gussenhoven, 2003) Intonation also provides linguistic information; speakers use it to highlight topics, hold the floor and express contrasts (Wichmann, 2000) It provides auditory cues to the beginning and end of major syntactic constituents (Cutler et.al., 1997) It is obvious that intonation is important and necessary to acquire for learners of English especially for anyone whose native language does not have a similar intonation system as English intonation So is the case of Vietnamese learners of English because Roach (1991) pointed out that English is an intonation language while Vietnamese is a tone language The matter seems all right for English major learners since they have to take a subject called ‘Phonetics and Phonology’ in their syllabus, so they may have a chance to study intonation On the contrary, GE learners not have such a chance although these learners are the majority in the English learning community 95 They usually study English with a set of coursebooks of one kind or another and with the instruction of their teachers of English and it can be assumed that what intonation features they may know mainly depend on their coursebooks as well as their teachers There is a question “What and how much they know about English intonation?” The answer for the question what intonation features GE learners may study in their learning process could be revealed by analyzing their coursebooks and consulting their teachers in order to form an overall picture of the matter that is very useful for anyone interested Moreover, it is necessary to consider and challenge the appropriateness and the suitability of the approaches used to teach intonation given in the coursebooks and by teachers of English as well If these approaches not meet or satisfy the requirements, will another approach be needed or be incorporated to solve the problem? Therefore, the writer of the thesis chooses this topic for that is such a critical matter that many people may have concerns 1.2 ENGLISH INTONATION AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE For GE learners, intonation is indeed an unknown field; they may have enough grammatical and lexical knowledge to communicate successfully but they still fail in communicating with a native speaker because they not understand the discourse features or indeed how to deliver their message successfully Failure could possibly occur due to a number of factors Firstly, the essential information of the message is not grasped if the learner fails to stress the important information Equally, pragmatic meaning could be misunderstood if the learner does not understand when a topic is open or closed Overall, lack of misunderstanding leads to a poorly controlled conversation in which the learner cannot understand which information is given and which is new Moreover, while communicating, learners usually think only about WHAT they are saying e.g am I using the correct words, what type of question am I 96 responding to etc rather than HOW they are saying it Perhaps this is because there has been reluctance among teachers to integrate intonation into classroom activities As intonation being treated as something supplementary in class and too often found on the last page of a unit in the coursebooks - there is no wonder that learners themselves not equate its importance to grammar and vocabulary or even the speaking skill Equally, when teachers of English skip and neglect teaching intonation in their teaching process, they may have sent out a message to their learners that intonation is something difficult and intangible Therefore, because of the neglect of teachers and course-books designers, learners of English are, understandably, at a loss when faced with the task of using intonation in their English speech, or of interpreting it when they hear it from native-speaker speech Therefore, it is very easy to understand why learners of English always adopt the avoidance strategy They avoid the use of intonation and they resort to paraphrasing syntactic expansion or some other simplification processes to disambiguate their potentially ambiguous utterances in order to make their meaning clear However, it is the task, of perceiving and correctly interpreting intonation when learners of English hear it from a native speaker, which poses a real problem If they not solve this task appropriately, they will obviously fail in their communication and consequently they will not gain communicative competence which Widdowson (1978: 67) asserted that acquisition of communicative competence is “the ultimate aim in language learning”, necessitates reconciling these distinctions for practical classroom purposes Dirven et al (1984: 333) have stated that errors in intonation cause more miscommunication, and thus deserve greater precedence over segmental because “In view of the fact that segmental information in the acoustic signal 97 may well be of limited scope and reliability, it is of the greatest importance that the learner’s attention is directed to non-segmental information.” Miyauchi (2001, 15) similarly states this ‘Englishness’ is essential to interpret for foreign learners who not have similar systems of tonic highlighting or migratory prominence in Japanese, in order for Japanese learners of English to sustain oral/aural communication in English, it is not enough to know the exact meaning of every English word, but it seems crucial to share the prosodic knowledge of English… In this respect, the discourse intonation approach should be treated more seriously as a priority to improve students’ communicative skills David Brazil developed the discourse intonation approach suggesting the theory that emphasizes communicative contexts and the interactive nature of spoken communication, and regards that intonation is central to spoken interaction (Cauldwell and Allen, 1997: 10) Brazil’s Discourse intonation seems to provide English learners with the simplest possible description on intonation and to adopt the language user’s perspective, not the linguist’s one In general, DI views speech as a purpose-driven activity where speakers and hearers co-operate to reach the goal of shared understanding, where ‘intonation signals play a key role in listening, as well as speaking, as they signal a speaker’s assumptions and intentions with regard to the shared ground between speaker and hearer’ (Cauldwell and Allen, 1999:12) 1.3 THE OVERALL ATTITUDE TOWARD ENGLISH INTONATION TEACHING TO GE LEARNERS In HCM, GE learners are the majority in the English learning community compared with English major learners They can study general English in secondary schools, high schools, universities, colleges and foreign language centers For school learners, they have two different systems to learn general English: a three-year system (which starts in 10th grade) or a seven-year 98 system (which starts in 6th grade) The choice depends on many factors such as the decisions from the Ministry of Education, school decisions, school facilities, availability of teachers of English and so on Their coursebooks are the ones designed and published by the Ministry of Education These coursebooks pay much attention to pronunciation but not contain any intonation features and so there is no need for the teachers to spend time teaching them intonation As a result, the learners not know anything about English intonation Moreover, only two of the four skills in learning English are tested in their examinations Thus, their teachers and the learners themselves just focus on writing and reading skills needed to serve their examinations Therefore, they not realize and recognize the existence as well the importance of intonation in communication For other GE learners, their coursebooks are chosen by the people in charge and some of the courseboooks may contain intonational features presented a very close relationship between intonation selection and grammar and speaker’s own attitudes However, the validity of grammatical and attitudinal approaches toward intonation teaching has been challenged so much because these approaches cannot express all functions of intonation Furthermore, although teachers of English have to use a coursebook to teach and follow its content, they also have some discretion to decide what to teach and how to teach Because of certain objective difficulties, teachers tend to leave out the intonation teaching or if they co-teach with a foreign teacher, this native speaker will be responsible for intonation teaching However, the number of foreign teachers is limited and they usually teach intonation intuitively without a profound and scientific support Thus, the chance for GE learners to access intonation is limited consequently In examinations, unlike school learners, four skills are tested Nevertheless, one important thing is that most of the examiners are Vietnamese teachers of English who not pay their attention to intonation teaching Likewise, they not highly recommend the learners’ intonation using The learners, busy with segmentals, will not spend 99 time on intonation learning, as it does not help them get higher marks in their examinations Intonation is very important in the achievement of communicative competence, which is the ultimate purpose of any language learners (see 1.2) In order to master intonation, besides the sound knowledge, learners should have opportunities to practice speaking with native speakers of English It means that the learners of English need an English-speaking environment in which they can practice their speaking skill Through conversations, learners could realize how intonation may contribute to conversation meanings and then they could apply what they have learned to improve their speaking skill However, such an environment does not always exist in the city and it exposes the truth that learners not have much chance to speak to native speakers of English Thus, if the learners have some knowledge on intonation, there is nearly no opportunity for them to use and it leads to the fact that they will find it useless and unnecessary It can be assumed that intonation is one the most neglected areas in teaching This neglect comes from many sides such as teachers of English, coursebooks’ designers and social conditions that are not ideal for GE learners to master intonation 1.4 SUMMARY This chapter has provided the thesis rationale, the overall attitudes toward intonation teaching to GE learners as well as the intonation importance in the process of gaining communicative competence It is obvious that intonation serves to get communicative competence Therefore, Discourse Intonation by Brazil, if it can be integrated with the other approaches, seems to provide an excellent means, for language teachers, of entering the arena of interactional language, of analyzing for themselves and with their students what Candlin et al have described as the “inherently creative and potentially dynamic…interrelationship…of communicative knowledge.” A major advantage of DI, for the purpose of pedagogic use, is rather precise that it involves a formal generalized system, which links certain phonological features 100 of language to definite communicative meanings To that extent, DI is a finite system with certain clearly expressed contrasts and relationships, which possibly constitutes the necessary basis for any descriptive systems to be learnable, and as such, could function as a linchpin for dealing with the ‘infinite relationships’ of interactive activity Chapter LITERATURE REVIEW The present study is an attempt to find out what intonational aspects are largely taught or emphasized and how they are treated in teaching GE learners in Ho Chi Minh City and explore possibilities of adopting DI into the intonation teaching Thus, the purpose of the literature review is to find out the principles and theories that intonation teaching is based upon as the background, other principles or theories of intonation, and which approaches are the most suitable for teaching intonation systematically at present Therefore, this chapter focuses on the following issues: 2.1 (1) The overall intonational functions (2) Tones in English intonation (3) English intonation and its acquisition (4) English intonation and its learning methods (5) English intonation teaching and some points of view (6) Discourse Intonation THE OVERALL INTONATIONAL FUNCTIONS Intonation choices made by speakers carry linguistic information and the various elements of intonation are seen to perform a variety of functions as Cauldwell and Allen (1999:10, 13) have reported that a wide range of labels is suggested for its functions 101 Crystal (1995:249) proposed six major functions: emotional/attitudinal, grammatical, informational, textual, psychological, and indexical Roach (1991:163-180) stated: attitudinal, accentual, grammatical, and discourse, though ‘accentual’ function can be integrated into ‘discourse’ Halliday (1994:296-299, 302-303), Halliday in Coulthard (1985:99), and Halliday in Brown and Yule (1983:169) largely dealt with three: grammatical, informational, and attitudinal significance of intonation choices Peter and Ehrlich (1992: 76) have identified grammatical, informational and attitudinal functions while Yallop just mentioned two ones: informational and attitudinal functions It is obvious that scholars commonly suggest the three functions, namely attitudinal, grammatical, and discourse However, with reference to the first two, each has its own problems and a lot of criticism can be found Cauldwell and Allen (1999:15) have pointed out the problems of pinning down the attitudinal meaning of tone choices by citing some of the descriptions from ‘Nine ways of saying yes’ by Crystal (1995:248) as follows The imprecision of the descriptions It is difficult to be precise about emotional nuances For example it is difficult to say what the difference is between the meaning ‘detached, unemotional statement of fact’ and ‘routine, uncommitted comment; detached and unexcited’ Crystal allows a tone to mean something (e.g the low fall’s unemotional) or its (near) opposite (e.g the low fall’s dramatic)—depending on the context This is tantamount to saying that any tone can mean anything, depending on the context This is a serious problem for a systematic description Crystal’s is not a purely linguistic description He indicates that the meaning of an intonation choice may depend on associated gesture or facial expression This is almost the case, but this makes it very difficult to systematize the description The third comment by Cauldwell and Allen applies to Roach’s description (1991:166) of the attitudinal function as well According to Roach (1996: 45), the claim that “…we use intonation to express our attitudes” is 102 fundamentally wrong He then added that work by phoneticians on emotions and attitudes in speech has tended to have a rather simplistic view of the subject, and it has become perhaps rather commonplace among phonology teachers to quote some of the “ more speculative and unscientific statements which were made by O’Connor and Arnold” (Roach, ibid.) As Tench (1996) pointed out, many of the supposedly attitudinal functions of intonation, which have been suggested by earlier writers, are in fact better viewed as interactional Roach (1996: 48) stated we therefore need studies to show how people use what we usually think of as emotional or attitudinal expression in order to achieve some interactional result, for instance ‘sounding reluctant to agree’, ‘sounding friendly’, ‘sounding doubtful’ In the past, the attitudinal function of intonation was one of the main features of intonation model taught to learners of English as a foreign language The students were even taught that using inappropriate or “wrong” intonation pattern in a certain social environment might result in offense being taken by a person spoken to Such a view, for obvious reasons, probably caused a lot of anxiety in learners of English According to Couper-Kuhlen (1996), emotions, just like facial expressions or other body language, make themselves evident in spite of a speaker’s attempts to control them On the other hand, attitudes are usually deliberately displayed and given that they are intentionally shown to influence or even manipulate people, claimed Roach (1996: 48), they should have no place in the teaching of intonation McCarthy (1991:107,108) also endorsed this critical view above by claiming that it seems almost any emotion can be accompanied by any tone and without lexical or contextual 103 information or other vocal clues, it is impossible to reliably label a tone contour as displaying a particular attitude or emotion Moreover, Crystal himself in Coulthard (1985:98) reported an experiment, which demonstrated that native speakers find it virtually unattainable to agree when matching attitudinal labels with intonation contours Regarding the grammatical function, McCarthy (1991:106) observed that one widely held view is that there are ‘correct’ intonations for sentence structures, such as declarative sentence, question, tag question, wh-questions, yes/no questions, commands and exclamations Most common among them is that general questions (Yes/no questions) have rising tones and special questions (Wh-interrogatives) have falling tones, as in: /IS it ÌÊINteresting / (McCarthy, 1991:106) / WHAT’S the Ì PROBlem? / Nevertheless, according to McCarthy (1991:106), in fact there seems to be little hard evidence that this prevailing conviction is true, and much evidence to suggest that there is no one-to-one relationship between sentencetype and tone Crystal (1969 : 4) for example, pointed out that despite the many assertions that rising intonation is the usual mark of Yes/No questions, and falling intonation that of WH-questions, in conversational English, both falling and rising tones may be used with either type of question depending on the attitudes and other contextual features (i.e the "discourse conditions") involved Cruttenden (1997:88) also refused to adopt the grammatical meaning and states that almost any tone can be combined with any syntactic type Roach (1991:179) also thought that Cruttenden’s arguments are in many ways convincing Therefore, it could be assumed that grammatical and attitudinal approaches not explain or fit with real uses and functions of intonation because they ignore contextual factors and they not cover all functions of intonation 104 Since learners often ignore the fact that prominence can be used to emphasize new information, it is very necessary to give them as much practice as possible Another option is that the teacher can have learners listen to the dialog carefully and ask them to mark all the prominent words while listening Through listening, or ear training practice, learners can become more aware of and thus familiar with the use of this function It is suggested that the teacher use realia when acting out the dialog, which is very helpful for learners to make emphasis naturally on new information in their communication Function (4): Making an argument - “Mine is better than yours!” Making an argument is a type of communication skills that most people will need in their daily lives In order to get the idea of how prominent words are used to achieve this function, the teacher can have the learners listen to the tape first if the voice quality and pitch movement of the tape are well produced Otherwise, the teacher can work with learners underlining the prominent words first before getting into practice Tell the class that their task is to work in pairs making an argument about how good his or her daddy is After they have completed this activity, they can be given other situations where they compare their pets, boy/girl friends, teachers, motorcycles, watches, and so on At this time, learners have to work out by themselves where the prominent words are and then practice their own dialogs Example: Jane: My daddy’s really wonderful He’s big and strong and handsome 13 Annie: Really? Well, my daddy can everything Sally: Can he? What? Annie: He’s really smart He can speak a hundred languages Sally: A hundred! Which languages can he speak? Annie: Well, he can speak Spanish, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Arabic, and uh, a lot more Sally: Well, my daddy is athletic Annie: Athletic? Sally: Uh huh He can swim, ski, and play football, tennis, and baseball Annie: Oh, well, can your daddy cook? (Hartley & Viney, 1983, p.14) As a follow-up activity, the teacher can have learners play boasting by creating and acting out a TV commercial Tell the class that they are going to make a TV commercial where two famous competitive brand products, for instance, ‘Pepsi’ and ‘Coke,” are promoting their products to get more customers to buy them To create a more dramatic effect of advertising, learners have to, on the one hand, use prominence appropriately, and on the other, demonstrate a clever use of emotions, such as showing excitement, disappointment, and surprise Above are the suggested activities for teachers of English to teach prominence Obviously, teaching prominence takes time and not all these activities could be done at the same Instead, these activities ought to be integrated into different lessons depending on learners’ levels during the course in order to help learners fully understand it and then use it effectively in communication 14 5.1.3 Teachers of English ought to adapt existing materials to teach DI instead of requiring new ones It is very important to begin to integrate intonation in classroom activities Admittedly, within DI, there is still a lack of materials However, any existing listening materials can be used to teach DI with some adaptability as the integration does not require new or extensively revised texts; even the most basic materials can be modified If more traditional, grammar-based coursebooks are used, an overwhelming percentage of exercises will consist of statements unrelated in texts that are supposed to be manipulated toward specific grammar ends Such statements can be adapted for use in different discourse situations featuring various speech acts for interactive purpose The teacher’s mission in this situation is to point out not how the sentences are constructed (not ‘intensive’ grammar practice), but what they do, i.e., what pragmatic function they serve If more recent and communication-based coursebooks are used, they will contain contextualized exercises, and in this case, teachers should make intonation practice an integral component of their teaching Below are the examples of how to adapt the existing materials in coursebooks to teach DI • Example In this coursebook, the pronunciation focus activity would give students the impression that intonation is fixed However, the dialogue on the tape can show 15 the difference of intonation related to the meaning in context The rather exaggerated and slow recording could be suitable for raising the awareness of discourse intonation for GE learners of English The dialogue below is an extract from Unit ‘East West – Basics’, which includes a good example of introducing prominence, tone, and key selection (See 2.6.2.1, 2.6.2.2 and 2.6.2.3) TUESDAY (1) G: // ÌÊ THAT was FUN! // (2) B: // ÌÊ yes, it WAS.// // ÌÊ you’re very GOOD.// // Ì how OFten you PLAY ?// (3) G: // Ì oh, about TWICE a WEEK.// // Ì how about YOU?// (4) B: // ÌÊ about TWICE a (H) YEAR!// The previous dialogue tells that the girl and the boy are talking about the tennis game they just played In spite of the stress-timed rhythm theory that the coursebook supports, the recording is rather different The prominence projects the speaker’s decision on which word, or precisely which accented syllable should be highlighted, according to the context of interaction Replies (3) and (4) show easy examples of ‘selective’ prominence: the number of times and the time duration are selected among various choices The difference is the boy’s ‘high’ key selection on the second prominent syllable - (H) YEAR He is contrasting what it is actually the case with what the girl might expect, by using the same word pattern as the girl, but he emphasizes the contrast by changing the second prominent word and the key of termination • Example (H) is the High key selection (See 2.6.2.3) 16 The purpose of the examples is to heighten learners’ sense of option about prominence and sentence-final intonation A: (1) (H) What did you think of the eXAM? B: (2) I thought it was HARD C: (3) ExCUSE me? (4) You found it HARD? B: (5) Yeah, TOTally D: (6) Well, I didn’t (7) I thought it was pretty EASY (L) (Hagen & Grogan: 1992, 134) A: (8) I have to buy a BOOK B: (9) What KIND of book? A: (10) A TEXTbook B: (11) For GRAMmar or READing? A: (12) I have THOSE books already This one’s for pronunciAtion (Hagen & Grogan: 1992, 134) The dialogues above are typical of what might be found in coursebooks, but they can be modified and used in group-work with four different types suggested variations One goal is to get the learners to correlate the pitch, for example of request (3), with an appropriate register (polite or not), if (3) is uttered within a ‘mid’ key rather than a ‘high’ key, it is a polite request for clarification rather than an expression of surprise or disbelief (H) is the High key selection (See 2.6.2.3) (L) is the Low key selection (See 2.6.2.3) 17 Despite the limited number of utterances in the sample dialogues, they still contain a variety of sentence types and discourse management strategies Questions are posed and information is sought in (1), (4), (9), (11); responses are given in (2), (5), (10) and (12); confirmation is requested in (3) and (4); surprise is expressed in (4); opinions are stated in (2) and (6) and challenged in (4); and a differing opinion is offered in (7) Kramsch (1986) describes the discourse management skills used here to include the following: • “turn-taking” [four speakers each take the floor and relinquish it]; • “linking and expanding” [utterance (4) restates (is linked to) utterance (2); utterance (7) expands on (6); utterances (9) and (11) expand on utterances (8) and (10) by requesting additional information]; • “negotiation” [questions (3) and (4) request clarification and confirmation of what the previous speaker said]; • “repair” [although there was no misunderstanding, (5) confirms what the speaker had originally said and adds emphasis] These constellations can readily be adjusted to derive additional roleplays that the students might play out as alternate scenarios, e.g., Speaker A should not be polite; B should interrupt; C should not yield, etc In sentences (6) and (7), a contradictory opinion is expressed and particular word(s) contrasting with a previous word or idea are stressed: Well, I didn’t and I thought it was pretty easy This added prominence on ‘easy’ is greater than the one used in a neutral statement When students practice marking this emphatic or contrastive stress, knowledge of lexical antonyms is also reinforced 18 In utterances (10) and (12), prominence on ‘text’ and ‘those’ emphasizes the new pieces of information that are being introduced In practicing language used in social interaction, learners can also incorporate the variable key, or the pitch relative to that used in the immediately preceding utterance, which functions as a control factor in conversation As presented before, utterances can be described as being in a particular key: H (high), M (mid), or L (low) Since utterance (1) in the first dialogue begins a new topic, the beginning of the question might be uttered in high key (H) Since Speaker B then takes the floor for the first time and continues with the topic begun by Speaker A, high key might also be used at the beginning of utterance (2) By contrast, if Speaker D wishes to conclude the discussion of that topic, low key (L) might be used on utterance (6), along with low falling pitch at the end of the utterance to signal finality at this potential transition point The teacher can introduce the concept of interactive pitch by pointing out keys that would not be used To structure such exercises, learners form groups of four Each person receives an index card assigning the recipient a specific role, e g., Speaker A is the “discussion leader,” responsible for introducing new topics; Speaker B is responsible for responding to questions and stating an opinion; Speaker C is supposed to interrupt and ask for clarification of any piece of information and is then to express surprise or disbelief; and Speaker D is to contradict what one of the others has said Students are to play the roles indicated on the card they receive for one or more assigned topics Then the cards can be redistributed and the roles rotated In this way, students will learn to listen to the prevailing key of 19 a conversation and manage the discourse so that they are perceived as cooperating group members Taping these dialogues would make it possible for learners to listen to and analyze their use of key As shown above with the simple examples of beginning-level dialogues, it is possible that new materials will not necessarily have to be created for classroom use as existing dialogues can be varied to teach discourse intonation As seen in the above examples, the general principle to be applied in adapting existing materials for intonation practice is that by altering the situation or surrounding context, the role, status, or attitudes of the speakers and the intended or expected outcome of a conversation or interaction, occasions for various possible intonations can be made available The above examples also show that teachers of English, instead of teaching intonation patterns as they are given in the coursebook, can analyze and adapt the existing materials to teach DI 5.2 Recommendations for Coursebooks’ Designers Because coursebooks are also one of the main sources to provide GE learners with knowledge, it is ideal and convenient to use coursebooks to introduce DI Therefore, coursebooks designers ought to adapt their points of view on intonation and intonation teaching by integrating DI into coursebooks’ content They can integrate DI into the coursebooks’ content by doing the following things: 5.2.1 They ought to present the concepts of DI in their coursebooks’ content Along with stating intonational features according to sentence-types and presenting inhibiting grammatical assignation of intonation, they ought to 20 provide the concepts of DI in their coursebooks’ content Depending on the levels, coursebooks’ designers will select which is considered suitable for GE learners to present in their coursebooks The DI features should be stated briefly, such as what they are, what functions they can express in communication… and there should be constant consolidation of features introduced because it will ensure that whatever learners learn in the classroom will become part of their communicative competence 5.2.2 They ought to design different kinds of intonation teaching exercises Besides ‘traditional’ intonation exercises such as to listen to tapes, distinguish tones and then imitate those tones…, coursebooks’ designers ought to design different kinds of listening and speaking exercises so that GE learners can study DI more effectively Many types of exercises they can design for GE learners to as follows: • Have learners listen holistically to try to get an idea of the overall shape and character of the intonation before tracking its subparts Mark points at which the speaker pauses with two periods ( ) for a short pause and three periods (…) for longer pauses — to become aware of how native speakers (1) keep thought groups together, (2) convey information in “chunks” in the L2, (3) begin a new topic, and (4) add a parenthetical remark Mark the words that are perceived as being prominent in sentences and entire paragraphs Mark pieces of information as “mentioned already” or “not known yet and thus new.” 21 Mark the movement of pitch at the sentence accent with symbols signifying rising, falling, rising-falling, falling-rising, and level tones Mark each sentence at both the beginning and the end for high, mid, or low key (H, M, L) • Have learners match pairs of questions with replies (and vice versa) They could ask learners which of two questions is more likely to have been posed to elicit a particular reply (See 5.1/ step 1) They could ask learners to give an appropriate answer to the questions they thought they heard – either given multiple choice answers provided in written form or in open-ended oral activity (See 5.1/step 1) They could give learners a statement and ask them to read it with prominence for given questions For example, the statement ‘That is my new black leather jacket.’ can be the answer for different questions if it is spoken with different prominence: (a) - What’s that? - That’s my new black leather JACKET (b) - Whose new jacket is that? - That MY new black leather jacket (c) - Is that your new jacket, or your old one? - That’s my NEW black leather jacket (d) - Which is your new black leather jacket? - THAT’S my new black leather jacket 22 They could design exercises that ask learners to listen to the first utterance of a question-answer sequence, or the first few utterances of a conversation, and ask them to predict what the intonation contour for the next sentence(s) might be before listening to the actual dialogue on tape • Have learners learn how to use intonation to express attitudes by guessing or changing the mood, attitude, or intent of a speaker They could design exercises that ask learners first to hear the utterance in isolation and make a guess before listening to the rest of the dialogue or conversation, and then stay with or change their original answer The same sentence could be spoken with different emotions and embedded in larger contexts For example, learners can be instructed to turn relatively emotion-less questions into echo questions requesting confirmation or expressing incredulity A: When is the test? B: The test is on Monday A: WHEN did you say the test is? and The test is on MONDAY? (requesting confirmation) (incredulous) They could design exercises that ask learners to practice statements or exclamations that express attitudinal nuances by responding with exasperated or emphatic intonation as follows: B: No, it’s not going to be on Tuesday I told you it’s going to be on MONDAY 23 5.2.3 They ought to point out practical ways of teaching certain intonational matters within DI It is useful if practical ways of teaching certain intonational matters are included in the coursebooks besides the general concepts of DI because it will help teachers of English save time on lesson preparations (See 5.1.2) For example, in case concerning tag questions, tags can ‘traditionally’ have either final falling or rising intonation in English, depending on the speaker’s expectations about the answer A rising tone is used when the questioner really does not know the answer to the question, whereas with a falling pattern, the questioner presumes to know the answer and is merely trying to confirm the presumption as in the following examples Example 1: A: You don’t understand, you (Ì)? B: Yes, of course A: That’s what I thought Example 2: A: You don’t understand, you (Ê)? B: Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t A: Oh, well let me explain it again (Dauer, 1993: 238-239) However, with DI, tag questions can have more meanings than that and coursebooks’ designers should include these meanings of tag questions into the coursebooks’ content beside the ‘traditional’ ones In the followings examples, the different meanings of tag questions are given out very clearly 24 (a): You know why (Ê), don’t you? (Ê): This tag question indicates a solicitous question in which the speaker, not having expectation about the answer, is asking a genuine question (b): You know why (Ì), don’t you? (Ì): This tag question indicates statement- like intent whereby the questioner is expecting the hearer to know why and to confirm that this is the case (c): You know why (Ê), don’t you? (Ì): This tag question indicates the questioner again assumes that the listener knows why and wants to confirm this fact The rising intonation in the first clause may indicate a sort of reminder to the listener who may know why (d): You know why (Ì), don’t you? (Ê): The speaker thinks or expects that the listener know why, but then has doubts and wishes to confirm this fact (Chun, 2002: 223-224) 5.2.4 They ought to add authentic listening materials to their coursebooks In accordance with recent linguistic research trends of basing theories of intonation on naturally-occurring speech data, authentic conversational data should also be incorporated into instructional materials Examples should be taken from natural conversations and real interactions by native speakers of the target language, and learners could be asked to a close analysis of the utterances, listening to conversations repeatedly (and possibly also observing them on videotape) and paying particular attention to the intonation patterns and the pitch ranges used 5.3 Summary 25 This final chapter includes some recommendations for teachers of English and coursebooks’ designers of how to incorporate DI into teaching to improve GE learners’ knowledge on intonation The recommendations for teachers of English are stated that they ought to integrate DI into teaching intonation However, it is unlikely for them to teach all the elements of DI because it is a real burden for them Therefore, the suggestion is that teachers of English could teach prominence and tone because these two elements are important and teachable as well and the other two elements are optional Then, chapter proceeds with presenting how to teach prominence chosen as an example to discuss in details Prominence is designed to teach in two main stages: the first stage is to give learners practice in relating prominence to meaning in communication, with more controlled and listening discrimination activities; and the second stage is to give learners practice in performing communicative functions using prominence, with more free and real conversation activities The activities in the two stages are suggested with the hope that they would be of use to teachers interested in helping their students use English for clear communication Finally, it is recommended that teachers of English, by adapting the existing materials in the coursebooks, could use these materials to teach DI instead of requiring new ones and two examples of how to adapt the existing materials to teach DI to GE learners from a new perspective were given to illustrate the point For coursebooks designers, the first recommendation is that they ought to present the concepts of DI in the coursebooks’ contents along with stating intonational features according to sentence-types and presenting inhibiting grammatical assignation of intonation The second one is to design more different kinds of intonation teaching exercises such as to have learners listen holistically to try to get an idea of the overall shape and character of the intonation before 26 tracking its subparts, to have learners match pairs of questions with replies and vice versa… The next recommendation is that coursebooks’ designers ought to point out practical ways of teaching certain intonational matters within DI and an example of teaching tag questions according to DI was given The last recommendation for coursebooks’ designers is that they ought to add authentic listening data to the coursebooks’ content to help GE learners improve the awareness of intonation With efforts and consideration from teachers of English and coursebooks’ designers, GE learners may have a better knowledge on intonation and then the knowledge on intonation may, likewise, help them to become communicative competent 27