Intonation Acquistion by ESL Students: A Case Study

Intonation is one of the most challenging topics to cover in the ESL classroom. Steven Donahue explains that there are three aspects to the problem of intonation pedagogy. One, there is wide disagreement over the formal description of the English intonation system. Two, there is no ready consensus about the semantic contribution for each posited formal description. And, three, intonation is subject to a load factor for both native and nonnative speakers whereby many speakers will sacrifice intonation contours when concentrating on other aspects of communication.

For the ESL teacher, attempting to teach subject matter that has multiple meanings or is under-defined can be a nightmarish task. While canonical patterns may be covered in the classroom ( Yes-No, Tag Question, Wh-question), few texts even bother to give the ESL teacher or learner the skills necessary to produce intonation in a communicative manner. In order to try and find a more effective method of teaching intonation, a series of experiments were conducted in an attempt to tease out answers to the following:
1. Which intonation Categories do ESL students already come into the classroom with?
2. Is there a “goodness-of-example” Prototype for each intonation pattern in terms of gesture and facial expression?
3. Has intonation been successfully learned
by ESL students?

Formal System
Put simply, intonation involves the stretching of the vocal cords. When they are stretched, the frequency or pitch is higher; when relaxed pitch is lower. Changes in pitch can reflect changes in meaning. Some of these changes might be lexical as in the meaning of a word, e.g., record (noun) versus record (verb). Some might be grammatical as in signaling a question. Other changes might reflect the mood of the speaker and signal
excitement, boredom, or anger.
For the purposes of this study, 27 intonation patterns were put into a test instrument. Intonation patterns ranged from #1 Statement with a falling pattern to
#27 Determined (very serious) with a series of falling slides. The full system is available for viewing at http://fs.broward.cc.fl.us/~sdonahue/diagnosis.html. The twelve main patterns responsive to this report are described
in the table on p.27.
Semantic Contribution
For languages of the world, there seems to be “ a near-universal distinction between fall and rise expounding meanings at a level of abstraction higher than that between statement and question.” (Cruttenden, 1981: 85). In this article, I will refer to the basic level categories of intonation as Prototypes or best examples, and I will refer higher into-
nation abstractions as Categories.

The traditional, Aristotelian view of Categories holds that they are characterized solely by the shared properties of their members. Dogs belong to the same Category because of common characteristics such as barking, loyalty, wagging tails, and ability to
mate with other canines.
George Lakoff in Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things calls the classical view of such categorization objectivism. Objectivism is characterized by an operation that focuses on “manipulation of abstract symbols and that these symbols get their meaning via a correspondence with the world, objectively construed, that is, independent of the understanding of any organism.” In other words, Categories involve “disembodied symbol-manipulation” and not gut or intuitive interpretation. In teaching intonation, for example, you would teach that mocking and irony patterns belong to a Category showing unexpected highlighting of what would otherwise be a plain fact so as to belie that fact.

The ESL student must operate on two levels: listen for the formal pattern and in-terpret the semantic
significance. An intonation pattern such as “irony” would add several layers of complexity to this basic model and would only be understood from interlocking context, e.g., “Am I a teacher?” is a Yes-No question, but the sudden rise on “I” would indicate irony because it is a question that both I as the asker, and you as the listener should know. There are layers of inconsistencies that need to be sorted out to extract meaning from the utterance. It is an intonation meaning that rides atop the grammatical string. As ESL teachers, we realize that the inability of being able to extract these more complex levels of meanings (such as Categories of irony, humor, mocking) by our students leads to misunderstandings and communication failures. Underpinning these more complex Categories are Basic Categories or Prototypes. William Labov demonstrated that the linguistic categorization of household items like mugs, cups, and bowls showed that there were no clear cut lines between what constituted, for example, a cup and a bowl by participants in the study. In other words, some items were “better” examples of a Category than others. The phenomena where certain items show psychologically real degrees of membership was observed in Eleanor Rosch’s seminal experiments. These “best examples” are called Prototypes. In terms of learning intonation, the teacher would refer to the best example of a particular intonation pattern such as Happy is Up; Sad is Down or Unknown is Up ; Known is Down.

The relevant pedagogical question that must be asked for effective instruction of intonation is : “Is a particular intonation pattern best taught by referring to a Category or by referring to a Prototype or a combination of both?”

In the classical model of Categorization, we would witness the gradual emergence of intonation by ESL speakers as they constructed those contours which defined membership. Here, the ESL learner would contextualize native utterances that he or she hears and by overextension eventually get closer and closer to the native mark. Typically, ESL students overextend question intonation patterns and apply the rising Yes-No pattern to Wh-Questions. As they master question intonation patterns, they eventually use the rising pattern only for Yes-No questions and abandon it for the Wh-pattern.

On the other hand, acquisition by Prototype would be typified initially by underextension. With overextension, the student is using one pattern to cover two or more situations ; with underextension, they use two or more patterns to cover a single situation. In the same manner that a first language learner’s native Prototype might differ from a native adult’s, the second language learner may go through an adjustment, a zeroing-in process whereby the native Prototype is linked to the English Prototype. For example, an ESL learner may want to be nice to someone who is doing a good job and alternately use Coaxing or Approval intonation patterns in a seemingly random pattern during the intonation acquisition process. With both Coaxing and

Approval patterns, there is a Prototype of rising and falling, but the ESL student has not yet figured out which one is semantically appropriate for a particular context.

Load Factor
Tied in with interference from the second language is the concept of load factor. Second language learners seem to learn intonation last and throw it overboard when they get nervous. Native speakers can go monotonic when stressed as well. On the other hand, both language groups will resort back to attitudinal intonation when under heavy emotional load. It may be that under stress, intonation that is acquired by Categories may be abandoned and more basic patterns that invoke an intonation Prototype may re-emerge. Obviously, in teaching intonation, it is important to maintain a relaxed environment. In addition, under stress, this lack of adherence to intonation norms can lead to painful, ambiguous, or at times, comical misunderstandings.

Methodology
Three tests were administered over the course of four months in conjunction with ESL pronunciation courses. One hundred and seven students either listened to the teacher’s live voice or the recorded test in the language lab at Broward Community College, Florida. The test results were recorded on Scantrons or directly from the Web site.

1. Pretest. Twenty-seven intonation categories were put into a multiple choice test. The teacher read the items aloud to the class.
Here is an example of one item:

The pretest, which was a pure listening test without graphics showed these results. The percent are for the correct student responses. Students generally got an “A” in this test.
2. Photo Test. A twenty-seven Category item test corresponding to the same categories as the intonation pretest was developed. The items were read aloud by the teacher. Here students were to couple gesture and facial expression photos while listening to the instructor’s voice. In this “goodness-of-example” or Prototype test, students did poorly and got between a low “C” and an “F”.
Here is an example of a test item:

3.Posttest. A twenty–seven Category test was developed and given to students in a language laboratory with listening tapes.
Prior to the final posttest, many students studied the Intonation module prepared for the course and listened to the instructor’s accompanying tapes in the language laboratory.

Conclusion
This study sought to determine whether an adequately described unit of English intonation could be taught in the ESL classroom. In order to do this it was first necessary to determine which intonation categories ESL students are coming into the classroom with, to find any universal patterns through a goodness-of-fit test or Prototype, and to perform a posttest to assess the learning outcomes of the semester.
The following are the conclusions based on the quantitative data and descriptive analysis summarized on the preceding pages.
(1) Generally, students are coming into the classroom with stronger falling patterns than rising patterns. They seem equipped with the universal or Basic Categories as outlined by Bolinger. Prototypes such as Statements, Wh-Questions, and Yes-No as well as the Attitudinal categories of Shock, Surprise, and Determination [Anger or Dogmatic] are apparent.
(2) Secondly, in the “goodness-of-fit” Prototype experiments it was revealed that there is a great deal of polysemy or multiple readings in terms of linking expression and gesture photos to categories of intonation. A second factor here is that the more abstract the intonation Category ( Irony) the lower the score and the more concrete or salient (Determined) the higher the score, e.g., 11% versus. 78%.
(3) Next, in most cases the learning of acquisition intonation by ESL students has been markedly shown. The declines in categories that were known by the students before coming into the classroom are dramatic indicators of the re-aligning of the intonation system in terms of English patterns. On the other hand, the six-fold improvement in some Categories is strong evidence of intonation acquisition.
(4) In general, students seem to be equipped with intonation Prototypes that correspond to a great degree with English counterparts. Most intonation ESL errors in this Category seem to be from underextension of the basic Category. However, when trying to master the unfamiliar aspects of English intonation which are more abstract Categories, errors due to overextension occur.

References

Bolinger, D. (1986). Intonation and Its Parts. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Brazil, D., Coulthard, M., & Johns, C. (1980). Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching. London: Longman.
Cruttenden, A. (1981). “Falls and rises: meanings and universals”. J. Linguistics 17, 77-91.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G.& Johnson, M.(1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Rosch,Eleanor (Eleanor Heider). 1973. “Natural Categories”. Cognitive Psychology 4:328-50.
Taylor, J.R. (1989). Linguistic Categor-ization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.