TEACHING ENGLISH INTONATION TO VIETNAMESE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH: TONICITY AND TONE

Abstract

English intonation is often regarded as diffcult to teach in the foreign language classroom. However, its communicative value is of importance, with tonicity (nucleus placement / focus) singled out as one of the few prosodic features of the Lingua Franca Core (Jenkins, 2000). This study adopts an experimental approach to investigate the effects of intonation training among Vietnamese learners of English in tertiary education in Vietnam, looking at tonicity and tone. 27 second-year English major students at a Vietnamese university were recruited. Participants were split into the experimental group (EG, n=16) and the control group (CG, n=11). The research was implemented in an intonation training course of ten 150-minute classes taken by the EG, each class consisting of group discussion and intonation training. Quantitative data were collected from EG and CG on their ability to perceive and produce intonation focus and tonal differences in English using intonation pre-tests and post-tests. The results reveal a statistically signifcant difference in performance between EG and CG in perception and production of tonicity and tone. EG performed better in perception than production and in tonicity than in tone, and performance improved signifcantly over the period of training.