Volume 5 (2014) Issue 2
pp. 207-224
Prosody
in the Foreign Language Classroom –
Always
Present, Rarely Practised?
Berit
Aronsson (Umeå,
Sweden)
Abstract (English)
The
aim of the present paper is to highlight the central role that
prosody plays for communication and to motivate the attention that
arguably should be given to prosody within the foreign language
classroom. The paper presents an overview of research addressing the
communicative aspects of prosody, particularly focussing on L2
prosody and how classroom practice could be informed by current
research. It also addresses bias from written language as one of the
main explanations to the lack of attention paid to prosody in the
language classroom and aims to highlight prosodic aspects of oral
language that are not so much found in writing and that, due to our
strong tradition of teaching languages through writing, run the risk
of being forgotten.
Spanish as a foreign language in a Swedish educational setting is
focused upon, and the frameworks used to guide teachers’
practice, the CEFR and the curriculum, together with textbooks
currently used in this setting, are analysed.
Key words: L2 prosody,
language teaching, bias from written language, CEFR
Abstract (Spanish)
El
objetivo de este trabajo es poner de relieve el papel central que
desempeña la prosodia para la comunicación y motivar la atención
que sin duda merecen los rasgos prosódicos en la clase de lenguas
extranjeras. El artículo presenta un resumen de la investigación
que aborde los aspectos comunicativos de la prosodia, sobre todo
centrándose en la prosodia L2 y cómo podría ser informada la
práctica en el aula por la investigación actual. También aborda el
sesgo de lengua escrita como una de las principales explicaciones a
la falta de atención prestada a la prosodia en la clase de lengua y
pone de relieve los aspectos prosódicos de la lengua oral que no se
encuentran tanto en la escritura y que, debido a nuestra fuerte
tradición de enseñar idiomas a través de la escritura, corren el
riesgo de ser olvidados. Se presta atención
especial al español como lengua extranjera en un entorno educativo
sueco, y se analizan los marcos
utilizados para guiar la práctica docente, el
CEFR y el currículo junto con los libros de texto utilizados
en la actualidad en este entorno.
Palabras
clave: prosodia L2, enseñanza de idiomas, sesgo de lengua escrita,
CEFR
1 Introduction
1.1
Setting the Scene
In
the applied field of language teaching, the prosodic features of
languages have long been a neglected area (Hidalgo 2006, Gut et al.
2007, Henriksen et al. 2010, Pickering 2012, Lengeris 2012):
van Els &a de Bot suggested as early as in 1987 that more
light had be shed on the learnability and teachability of the
intonation of a foreign language (van Els &a de Bot 1987: 154). Over two decades have passed and even if
some research has been carried out in this field, the gap between
research and practical application or
applicability of intonation in the foreign language classroom has not
been bridged, yet. Even if there is theoretical research available
that concerns prosody, the relevance of such research findings to the
applied field can only be investigated in studies of actual language
teaching (Gut et al. 2007: 16), which suggests that the pedagogical
applicability of this research remains unknown until it has been
empirically tested in teaching situations. The major part of the
existing body of research has been carried out on speech performed
under strictly controlled conditions (Gut et al (2007), which
limits the practical applicability of these results.
Unfortunately, as pointed out by Gut et al. (2007: 5), researchers do
not often sit in on language classes, and teachers seldom attend
conferences where research results are presented. There is no
naturally shared domain for these two groups and as a consequence,
research results are seldom used to guide classroom practice, and
research models are not often put to the test.
What is more,
the different approaches
to linguistics have traditionally been subject to a written language
bias (Linell 2005: 4). This bias seems,
last but not least, to
be present
in language teaching and
learning, where language features that lack a written counterpart are
neglected. In the theoretical field of L2 (second language)
phonology, a comparatively small amount of studies have been carried
out on L2 prosody, whereas a majority of the studies address the
segmental level (Mennen 2004, Henriksen et al. 2010), which rely on a
written phonetic alphabet. It is not until in the last few decades
that more general models have been developed for prosody (the models
initiated by Goldsmith 1976 and further developed by Pierrehumbert
1980, Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990, and Ladd 1996). In
addition, annotation systems like the widespread ToBI
(Tones and Break Indices)1
have appeared in the
research, but since this system has been developed for the expert
level (trained phoneticians), it presently
appears to be more or less unsuitable
for the foreign language classroom. It can also hardly account for
all aspects and meanings that may be expressed by prosodic features,
the prosody of an utterance contributing to its meaning in so many
different ways (Hirst 2004).
Within
current research on prosody it is well known that prosodic features
are essential for human interaction.
Several studies addressing foreign accented speech have shown that
the acquisition of correct stress- and intonation patterns at the
phonetic as well as pragmatic level are important in order to
communicate well (e.g. van Els & de Bot 1987, Anderson-Hsieh et
al. 1992, Munro 1995, Hahn 2004, Ramirez Verdugo 2005a, 2005b, 2007,
Lengeris 2012, Aronsson & Fant 2014). Prosodic features also
belong to the most basic language skills (Busnel et al. 1992, Gerwain
& Werker 2013, Vihman 1996, Vihman 1999, Vihman & DePaolis
1998).
Even
so, within the applied field of language teaching, prosody does not
seem to be paid much attention to, and this is true despite the
“communicative approach” that has been prevailing in language
teaching for many decades (Cantero 1994, Bartolí 2005, Celce Murcia
et.al 2010). A salient example is the CEFR (Common European
Framework of Reference) for Languages, the guideline used to describe
achievements of foreign language leaners across Europe. Bartolí
Rigol (2005) reports that this guideline lacks clear connections
between communicative skills and pronunciation: She points out that
even if the CEFR presents rather a complete content concerning
pronunciation, it does not include proposals for how to integrate
pronunciation in the communicative language class.
Foreign language textbooks, which reflect much of the CEFR
reasoning, have, in turn, provided
limited contexts only for the
practising of pronunciation features (e.g. Bartolí Rigol 2005
and Santamaría Busto 2010 for Spanish, Cauldwell & Hewings 1996,
Hahn 2004, and Pickering et al. 2012 for English, Hirschfeld 2003 and
Hirschfeld & Trouvain 2007 for German). The principal guiding
document for Swedish schools, the National Curriculum, is, to a high
extent, based on the CEFR (Börjesson 2012), which implies that the
same lack of connection between communicative skills and
pronunciation features as reported for the CEFR
will most probably be shown in this document as well and
reflected in the foreign language textbooks used in Sweden.
1.2
Aims of the Study
The
aim of the present study is to highlight the central role that
prosody plays for communication and to motivate the attention that
prosody should be given in the foreign language classroom. It aims
to identify the gap between theoretical research of the
communicative aspects of prosody that could
inform classroom practice on the one hand and the materials that are
provided by the applied field for the teaching of foreign languages
(curricula, teaching materials and other guidelines directed to
language teachers) on the other. In foreign language teaching,
a preference for language phenomena that have a written counterpart
is discussed as one of the possible explanations to this gap - a
point of view that will be further exposed in the present paper.
The
analysis of curricula and teaching materials is based on the example
of Spanish as the L2 in a Swedish
setting, and the following specific research questions are studied:
- What are the difficulties in teaching prosodic features and how can we manage them in the classroom situation?
- To what extent are prosodic features included in the communicative competences of foreign language learning as described by the Swedish National Curriculum and practised in Spanish L2 textbooks?
1.3
Terminology
In
the present paper, the terms prosody and suprasegmentals
refer to the level above the segment and include factors such as
word-stress, tone and quantity, aiming to
globally describe the characteristics of larger speech units such as
words or phrases, while the term intonation is defined
as tonal movements only. When the term pronunciation is used,
it refers to all aspects of pronunciation, and thus involves
both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation.
2 Language Features without Any Written Counterpart – the Communicative Value of
Prosody
2.1
The Dominance of Written Language
The
concepts of language, as closely connected to writing and literacy
(Linell 2005: 61) may be one of the explanations for
the large extent of research
carried out on segmental features, while the musical dimensions of
language (i.e. intonational) have, for the same
reasons, been less frequently studied. Within the written
tradition, information that expresses values
above the word or the segment is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In ancient times, reading was a
dominantly oral activity, performed in groups or individually
by people who knew how to read (which implies
that back then, no particular instructions regarding how
to read were needed). Modern reading, on the other hand, is mainly a
silent and solitary activity (Saenger 1997: 1) with other
requirements. Punctuation, degree (font size) and style (e.g. italics
or boldface), which are the main tools found in writing in order to
express meaning at the suprasegmental level, were gradually developed
during the medieval times and indicated a shift on the part
of the reader from the oral retention in memory of words to visual
memory and direct access to the meaning expressed beyond the
lexical level (Saenger 1997: 71). These ‘construction notes’
(term used by Saenger (1997: 70) were originally introduced in
medieval texts of the Western world for
pedagogical reasons, and where they occurred, they were added by the
reader rather than the writer (Saenger 1997: 72). The tools used in
written texts in order to express meaning at the level beyond the
segment or isolated word level, are, however, rather imprecise
instruments in order to express all the possible meanings
involved in spoken prosody, which may be due to
the fact that written language is, by its nature, different
from spoken language.
The
long Western tradition within foreign
language teaching to teach what can be studied in writing may
originate from the assumption that writing represents speech (Harris
2001: 185). These assumptions are, in their turn, based on
pedagogical programmes developed for children in order to introduce
them to alphabetic literacy, where a one-to-one correspondence
between letters and sounds has been taught for centuries (Harris,
2001: 185). However, as Harris argues, “if language is what writing
represents, then writing can hardly be at the same time language”
(Harris 2001: 186). Even if written language sometimes is used in
situations that show a tendency towards spoken
language such as chat-rooms, the common ground or mutual
intersubjectivity (e.g. Clark 1996, Fant 2006) continuously
developed between the given dialogue partners is of a different kind
in an oral conversation than in its written representation. In
writing the reader himself is free to create his own relationship
with the text, while in the oral conversation, he is constantly
dependent on the establishment of the mutual intersubjectivity
created by the musical dimensions of language which are mainly
manifested by tone and stress patterns.
2.2
The Informational, Dialogical and Emotional Values Transmitted by
Prosody
Prosody
is well known to contribute to the meaning of an utterance, and apart
from the lexically constitutive aspects, the informational,
dialogical and emotional values transmitted by prosody are discussed
among researchers. The meaning transmitted by intonation has, among
others, been studied by Halliday (1970) who, for the teaching of
English as an L2 concludes that the
importance of intonation is not so much that it is part of “a good
accent” or “the right way of speaking” (Halliday 1970: 21).
Intonation also carries a particular meaning similar to that of
grammar.
The
aspects of intelligibility of foreign accented prosody have been
frequently studied: Anderson-Hsieh et al. (1992), in a test in which
non-native speech produced by eleven language groups was evaluated by
native speakers, and Munro (1995), who tested whether native
listeners can identify foreign-accented speech on the basis of non
segmental information alone, presented evidence that intelligibility
is particularly affected by suprasegmentals. A study by Hahn (2004)
showed that when subjects listened to speech with correct stress
placement, they recalled significantly more content and evaluated
the speaker significantly more favourably than when primary stress
was placed wrong or when it was missing (2004: 201). Other
researchers, such as van Els & de Bot (1987) and Jilka (2000),
confirmed that intonational features alone convey accentedness.
As
regards syntax, prosody constitutes a major resource used in speech
for organising the turn-constructional units2
(Linell 2005: 63). These
units often also transmit pragmatic meaning. Such pragmatic skills
guided by prosody may relate to
- information structure (old / new information, foreground / background)
- feedback-related information (a claim / request /demand for confirmation of cognitive common ground; transactional intersubjectivity)
- relations-related information (a claim / request / demand for confirmation of interpersonal common ground; interactional intersubjectivity)
- appraisal-related information (the valuation / judging, or appreciation of the value of things) (definitions from Fant 2006: 192).
The
functions listed above all need
to be mastered in the foreign language. Studies show that, when established discursive
practices with pragmatic implications are not properly acquired in
the L2, they may cause confusion in spoken interaction (Ramírez
Verdugo 2005a, 2005b, Ramírez Verdugo & Trillo 2005, Pickering
2009, Pickering et al. 2012, Aronsson & Fant 2014, Aronsson
(forthcoming)). Studies performed by Ramírez Verdugo (2005a, 2005b)
and Ramírez Verdugo & Trillo (2005) showed that deviances in the
choice of tonal contour between native speakers and Spanish L2
learners of English had important implications for the pragmatic
messages conveyed: The deviances identified in the non-native
intonation patterns affected the information structure and
organisation of the speech (Ramírez Verdugo 2005a) and the speakers’
tendency to overuse certain prosodic patterns affected the learners’
ability to express certainty and uncertainty (Ramírez Verdugo 2005b:
2086, Ramírez Verdugo & Trillo 2006: 164). Pickering (2009) and
Pickering et al. (2012) argue that both tonal movement and relative
tone level contribute to intelligibility and interactional success in
ELF3
interaction. Aronsson & Fant (2014) showed that L2 learners of Spanish have difficulties in
mastering prosodic features
of pragmatic character at the transactional level in the L2 (second /
foreign language) since
no obvious equivalent exists in the L1 (native language). Aronsson
(under evaluation) showed that a prosodic
pattern, different from the normally expected one in a certain
context, may give rise
to a
less favourable
evaluation from the native speaker than the expected pattern.
Suprasegmentals play an important
role in communication,
not only for reasons of intelligibility, but also for the conveyance
of essential pragmatic and emotional aspects that facilitate the
smooth flow of a spoken dialogue.
2.3
Suprasegmentals or Segmentals in Foreign Language Teaching?
Some
researchers advocate the importance of suprasegmentals over
segmentals in foreign language teaching. McNerney & Mendelsohn
(1992) argue that a pronunciation course in English as a foreign
language should focus on suprasegmentals as they have the greatest
impact on the comprehensibility of the learner´s English. The
authors claim that suprasegmental features are far more important and
central to communication than segments:
For example, if a student says ‘I cooked the meat in a pen’ (meaning pan) it is very simple to interpret the correct meaning. If, on the other hand a student, in response to hearing the statement: ‘He went on holiday’, says the words ’Where did he go?’ with rising intonation, although his / her intention was to find out the location of the holiday (which calls for rising falling intonation), this will be processed by native speakers as expressing surprise or requiring confirmation that he had indeed gone on holiday. The context will not help to clarify this question. (McNerney & Mendelsohn 1992: 186)
The
same argumentation can be found in Firth
(1992) who concludes that the more
‘global’ aspects of pronunciation such as general speaking habits and suprasegmentals should take priority over more ‘local’ aspects such as segmentals. (1992: 181).
Hahn
(2004) also underlines the importance of teaching suprasegmentals and
the inclusion of these features in ESL (English as a Second Language)
curriculums.
Other
researchers, like Jenkins (2000), argue that suprasegmental features
operate largely at the subconscious level and are therefore
unteachable (Jenkins 2000: 146, 133) - an idea
that probably originates from our long tradition of teaching
languages through writing. Since the study of foreign languages has
traditionally focused on the written form and since tone and stress
patterns of language have little or no correspondence in writing
(Linell 2005: 27, 59), both teachers and learners are probably
rather unaware of their nature. This, however, does not by
default mean that clear descriptions and generalizable rules for
these structures are impossible to provide. As Linell argues,
talk-in-interaction is also an embodied activity in its own right
(2005: 59), and this activity deserves equal status and attention as
writing based abilities.
3 Prosody in L2
Teaching Materials – An Evaluation of the Swedish Case
3.1 Approaches to Prosody in
Foreign Language Textbooks Used in Sweden
Research
shows that L2 textbooks lack exercises in which prosodic aspects are
trained in authentic interaction (Section 1.1), although, as has been
shown in Section 2.3, research that could inform classroom practise
is available. Spanish L2 textbooks produced outside Sweden
are predominantly based on the formula listen
and repeat or on written language
and address the segmental rather than
the suprasegmental level (Bartolí Rigol 2005, Santamaría
Busto 2010). The prosodic aspects, on the other hand, are normally
addressed in a reduced number of pages at the very end of the book
(Santamaría Busto 2010). The question of
whether this is also true for L2 Spanish materials produced in
Sweden will be investigated in the present section, which aims to
investigate to what extent prosodic features are included in the
communicative competences of foreign language learning as described
by the Swedish National Curriculum and practised in Spanish L2
textbooks used in Sweden.
In
the case of Sweden, Spanish was included as a subject in the upper
secondary school more than 40 years ago, and in 1994, it was added as
an option in secondary schools. Spanish, after English, is now the
most popular foreign language studied in Sweden (Guadalupe & Riis
2013: 18-20), and a considerable number of
teaching materials are available. Some of the most commonly
used textbooks will be analysed here. The formulations of the
curriculum and the approach taken to the
pronunciation features of textbooks are considered as important
guidelines for teachers and are assumed to have a high impact
on how teaching is organised. Therefore the analysed
material, the curriculum and examples from textbooks, are used
as indicators of how much attention is given to prosody in the
classroom. Formulations and keywords from the content areas of the
two most recent Swedish National Curricula, the Curriculum 2000
and the Curriculum 2011, and some examples of exercise types
(that relate to oral production and perception) from textbooks guided
by both these curricula will be analysed.
The
textbooks examined are two commonly used textbooks guided by
the Curriculum 2000, the
first one
aimed for the Upper Secondary School and the second one aimed for
the (lower) secondary
school: Caminando (level
1)4,
Amigos uno
(level 1). After 2011 until this date, only three textbooks have been
published for Spanish
as an L2, and they are
all analysed here:
Aventuras (level
1) aims
at the secondary school, Vistas
(level 3) and La
plaza
(level 3), both aim at the upper
secondary school. We have mainly studied the approach to prosody at
level 1 since the initial proficiency level is of special importance
for the acquisition of prosody. Prosody is a basic speech function,
and it would be wise to include these features in the teaching from
the very start, otherwise pronunciation habits
from the L1 are easily
transferred and fossilised
in the L2 (Kjellin
2002).
3.2 The CEFR and the Swedish
National Curriculum for Modern Languages
Considering
the background given in section 2, it is somewhat difficult to accept
that the goal set up for the foreign language classroom for the
'grammar of pronunciation', speaking in Halliday´s terms (Halliday
1970: 21), usually does not go beyond the intelligibility level. If
we, as Halliday (1970) suggests, include pronunciation as a
part of grammar, it is interesting so see how differently
these two areas are approached in the CEFR (2001): As regards the
goals set up for each area, the label phonological control
is used for pronunciation skills, while the label used for the
grammatical competence is grammatical accuracy. For grammar,
communicative competence is described in terms of accuracy,
correctness
and errors,
while for phonology, approximations like intelligible
or
clear enough to be understood are
used (CEFR 2001: 114-117). Even if it may not be justified to
talk about native-like accuracy as a goal for pronunciation, having
reached a level of intelligibility is not enough to communicate well
in the foreign language. The mastery of at least some of the most
important pragmatic skills guided by prosody (as presented in Section
2.3) is essential for a more holistic interactional success.
If
a comparison were to be made with grammar, speech would be
intelligible enough, for example, if only the
infinitives of the verbs were acquired and used. However, no
one would ever accept this as a goal for the communicative competence
of grammar, not even at the most basic level, and this makes it
difficult to see why it should be accepted for pronunciation. Most
interestingly, grammatical competence, described in the CEFR as "the
ability to organise sentences to convey meaning", is stated as
“clearly central to communicative competence” (CEFR 2001: 151).
No similar formulations are found for pronunciation in spite of the
fact that the organisation of sentences also involves phonetic and
phonotactic properties and should thus be included in the
communicative competences - a lack that may be due to the less
precise models available for the spoken aspects of languages, at
least at the suprasegmental level.
In
the Swedish Curriculum 2000, pronunciation, although mentioned among
the communicative competences, is not stressed as a communicative
strategy. Instead words like linguistically coherent entities,
reformulations, synonyms, questions, are used to exemplify
these strategies - formulations that mainly give associations to
competences in vocabulary and syntax and not to pronunciation
features (www.skolverket.se;
15-01-2014).
The
guidelines provided by the Curriculum 2011 appear to be even more
closely based on the CEFR scales than those provided by the
Curriculum 2000 (Börjesson 2012). The central
contents for (roughly) CEFR
scale A1, which list areas that should be given the highest priority
in teaching, are expressed in terms of acquired reception and
production skills where, interestingly, pronunciation features are
referred to as språkliga
företeelser ‘language
phenomena’ (Skolverket 2013), i.e. peripheral linguistic
competences
that are not an integral part of the other content areas mentioned.
The dominance of
terminology associated with
language abilities based on and found in writing is also obvious in
these descriptions in which attributes
like ability to understand
words that carry
informational meaning, reformulations,
formulaic expressions,
everyday phrases or
politeness phrases5
are illustrative of
this tendency. A more holistic view, where the content areas and
linguistic strategies mentioned were described as including the
mastery of perceiving and producing target-like prosodic patterns
would be preferred, rather than the description of pronunciation
features as (isolated) ‘language phenomena’.
3.3 Examples from L2 Spanish
Textbooks
The
results from the previous section are in accordance with the way
exercises in textbooks are organised. Exercises that aim at raising
students' awareness of stress and intonation patterns beyond the word
and isolated sentence level are rare to find in L2 Spanish textbooks
produced for a Swedish setting, and this is
true for older and more recent textbooks, the latter having been
published after 2011.
First,
some examples of pronunciation exercises from L2 textbooks published
before 2011 (i.e. guided by the Curriculum 2000) are presented
(examples 1-4). The exercises should be read as examples of types of
exercises aiming at training perception
and production skills whose natural parts are
pronunciation and prosody. These exercise types do not aim at
enhancing the learner’s communicative skills by means of prosody -
instead, this skill is practised in isolated (written) words or
sentences, separated from genuine communicative situations. The first
examples (1-2) are from Caminando (Waldenström et al. 2007),
a textbook for the upper secondary school, level 1:
(1) ¡Pronuncia!Where is the word stress located in words in Spanish? The rules are simple [...]1. España, hablo, hola, bastante, historia ...”6(Waldenström, Westerman and Wik Bretz 2007, 16)
(2) Escucha!Listen to the following last names. Where is the stress located? Indicate the stressed vowels with dots.García Solana Fernández(Waldenström, Westerman and Wik Bretz 2007, 18)
Examples
(1-2) address word level stress rather than sentence stress, and the
exercises have no connections with coherent speech or communicative
situations. The exercise types (examples 3-4) that address the
perception and production of Spanish found in Amigos uno
(Saveska Knutagård et al. 2007) for the teaching of Spanish level 1
at Secondary Schools, do not specifically relate to pronunciation or
prosodic features. However, the writing based
approach and the lack of communicative context also
dominate these types:
(3) Escribe y escucha.The word order of the sentences has been changed. Write the words in correct order. Indicate also capital letters, full stop and comma. Listen afterwards to control that you have written it correctly.en vivo casa unacasi años tengo trece(Saveska Knutagård, de la Motte and Sauco de Thorelli (2007, 19)
(4) Escucha y repiteEs la una. [...]Son las tres.(Saveska Knutagård, de la Motte and Sauco de Thorelli (2007, 88)
(5) Escucha y hablaListen to the dialogue in exercise C and control that you have written it correctly. Then practise the dialogue in pairs until you can perform it really well.(Saveska Knutagård, de la Motte and Sauco de Thorelli 2007:9)
The
Pronunciation Rules of the Mini grammar of Caminando,
level 1 (Waldenström et al. 2007: 183-184), found at the end of the
book, mainly comment upon segmental aspects. The section that
addresses suprasegmentals and intonation deals only with word level
stress and two isolated intonation patterns: the difference between
question–intonation in yes- / no-questions and
wh-questions (i.e. what, where, why)
In the mini grammar of Amigos uno (Saveska
Knutagård, de la Motte, and Sauco de Thorelli 2007), the
pronunciation of Spanish is not mentioned, at all.
The
same trend is evident in the three textbooks for Spanish as a foreign
language published in Sweden after 2011 (Rönnmark & Quintana
Segalà 2012, Martel et al. 2012 and Molina Espeleta et al. 2012),
which ought to be guided by the Curriculum 2011. Pronunciation and
prosody are practised as separate competences with no relation to
dialogical contexts, and no obvious progression seems to be expected.
Only one of these three textbooks, Aventuras (Molina Espeleta
et al. 2012 ), aims at level 1 and will
be analysed here. In this textbook, the
exercise types aim at training
perception and production skills are, similar to the exercise types
presented for the textbooks published before 2011, oriented towards
the listen and repeat or the listen and write formula:
(6) ¿Cómo se dice? Listen carefully to how your teacher pronounces the countries at the last page and repeat.
(Molina Espeleta et al. 2012: 12)
(7) “¿Qué palabras dicen? 1. Write down what you hear on the cd. a) a) hola, sola, cola.”
(Molina Espeleta et al. 2012: 23).
(8) “¿Qué dicen? Your teacher will play a cd to you. Listen carefully to the five words that you hear. 2. Write the words in your notebook.”
(Molina Espeleta et al. 2012: 12)
In
Vistas (Rönnmark & Quintana Segalà 2012), which
aims at level 3, not a single specific pronunciation exercise is
presented. In the grammar section at the end of the textbook
(Rönnmark & Quintana Segalà 2012: 220), however, the rules for
accentuation at the word level in
Spanish are presented. Apart from these rules,
no attempts to describe prosodic features above this level can
be found. In La plaza (Martel et al. 2012), which also aims
at level 3, each chapter addresses pronunciation aspects, but
only at the segmental level and always related to orthographic
symbols, like for example the pronunciation of b and v
(Martel et al. 2012: 34), the pronunciation of g and j
(Martel et al. 2012: 88), and the pronunciation of ll and
y (Martel et al. 2012: 138). The accentuation rules
at the word level are also addressed in
this textbook (Martel et al. 2012: 8), but no section addresses
prosody at the phrase level.
The
various types of pronunciation and prosodic
features exemplified in this section may be justified in the
L2 classroom, but they need to be complemented by suprasegmental
patterns in real dialogical contexts in order to enhance progression
and the acquisition of more complex prosodic patterns used in
real interaction. This progression, however,
is not enhanced
in the textbooks analysed. Here,
it is assumed that the approach chosen by
textbook authors is partly attributable to the formulations of the
Curriculums (2000 and 2011) and the non-existent
relationship between current research and these documents. The
overall preference found in the
textbooks analysed is for exercises and
formulations based on writing, a tendency that, as shown in Section
1.1, is not limited to the Swedish context.
4
Prosody as a Communicative Tool in the Classroom – a
Methodological Discussion
Hidalgo (2006) claims that the
importance of prosody and intonation justifies the need to develop
adequate teaching methods for prosody in the SLA (Second Language
Acquisition) field: According to him, this domain is practically in
lack of studies (Hidalgo 2006, 81). The difficulties in teaching
prosodic features, as previously discussed in Section 2, most
probably originate from the teaching of
foreign languages having bee based over a long period of time on
written language standards, and the dominance of written language
still remains. We are generally not aware of the differences in
meaning that might be expressed by linguistic signs, which have no
written counterpart in the sense that we can overtly explain these
patterns to the same extent as we can explain a particular choice of
vocabulary, a morphological form or a grammatical structure, which
complicates the teaching of prosody. Our knowledge of prosody can be
explained as hidden knowledge that we have and make use of, but
without reflecting over the patterns we produce. More concrete tools
are available for the teaching of segmentals, such as a written
phonetic alphabet, which implies that the teaching of isolated sounds
could be made more straightforward, since learners can be provided
clear descriptions and generalisable rules.
For the teaching of grammar, a number
of studies have shown the effectiveness of form-focused explicit
instruction in L2 learning (see DeKeyser 2003 for an overview), a
means of instruction that has proved effective also for the
acquisition of phonological patterns (e.g. Saito 2011, Couper 2011
and Ramírez Verdugo 2006). Couper (2011) found that explicit
instruction, based on two separate techniques, was effective in the
teaching of pronunciation: the two techniques used were critical
listening - a method based on a perceptual
training of syllable codas in the L2 -
and socially constructed metalanguage - a contrasting approach
focussing on learners’ use of a linguistic meta language to
describe the rules for the pronunciation of syllable
codas. Saito (2011) found that explicit instruction of
English-specific segmentals had a significant effect on learners’
comprehensibility. Ramírez Verdugo (2006), which to our knowledge is
the only longitudinal study that involves explicit instruction for
the improvement of intonation, used computer-assisted feedback in a
ten-week-training programme in order to raise learners’ awareness
of the intonation patterns of the target language. Ramírez Verdugo's
study confirmed that learners´ perception and production of the
intonation patterns that had been focussed upon significantly
improved as a result of the intonation training. Form-focused
perceptual training, however, requires teachers to have
explicit knowledge of what patterns to draw
learners' attention to, which is generally not the case.
Several
studies have also shown that, when practising pronunciation,
perceptual training should precede oral practise (e.g. McAllister
1997, Santiago 2012), but obviously, there will not be much use
applying this method if the teacher does not know which patterns to
draw learners' attention to. Teachers are highly dependent on
their intuitive knowledge when teaching prosodic features, since they
lack explicit knowledge, not only among teachers, but to a great
extent within current research (Bartolí Rigol 2005, Derwing y Munro
2005, Lengeris 2012,). Good models for the teaching of prosody are
still not available, and examples that
show good teaching practices are scarce: for the reasons mentioned
above, teachers do not know how to integrate the teaching of
pronunciation in the communicative focus. They also lack materials
because there have been no attempts to integrate pronunciation in
these approaches (Bartolí Rigol 2005: 3). However, if prosody could
be seen as a musical dimension of language endowed with systematic
rules of its own, or as a way of conveying a message at the level
above the sentence, i.e. the pragmatic
level, then the teaching of prosody might be made just as
straightforward and clear as the teaching of any other grammatical
phenomenon.
5
Challenges for the Teaching and Learning of
Spanish Prosody
In
order to be able to create awareness of the informational and
dialogical dimension transmitted by prosody in the classroom,
teachers need a solid knowledge of the main prosodic characteristics
of both the target language and the learners’ L1. Such knowledge is
also required for practising
discursive strategies involving politeness and problem solving
in conversation, which is not always attributable to purely
linguistic (word / reformulation) parameters.
To
increase knowledge about how suprasegmentals operate in speech,
research results should, to a higher extent, be shared and
communicated to practitioners and thereby
directly applied in the classroom. We also need to know more
about how the effects of prosodic transfer relate to different
languages and about the impact that prosodic transfer might have on
communication. More knowledge is also required about the extent to
which some prosodic features are more teachable and / or learnable
than others. Further research in this field would be of help in order
to fine-tune teaching methods to each language.
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Author:
Berit Aronsson
Assistant
professor of Spanish
Umeå
University
Department
of Language
Studies
Humanisthuset
Umeå
universitet
901
87 Umeå
Sweden
E-mail:
berit.aronsson@umu.se
1
A system originally developed for English and based on
Pierrehumbert (1980) for tones and Price et al. (1991) for
boundaries and groupings.
2
The units of speech which organise the turn-taking of an oral
dialogue.
3 Defined
in Pickering (2009): ”Communication between fairly fluent
interlocutors from different L1 backgrounds, for whom English is the
most convenient language” (Pickering, 2009: 236). (Also
Breiteneder et al. 2006: 163).
4 According
to the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference
(CEFR), the proficiency level 1, which is the elementary level,
corresponds to scale A1. Level 3 corresponds to scale B1. Cf.
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/Linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp, 10-04-2013) and
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/Linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp;
13/11/2012).
5 Translated by the author from www.skolverket.se, the Swedish National
Agency for Education;
15-01-2014)
6 The
instructions of the examples of exercises presented in Section 4.4
have been translated from Swedish. The Spanish parts of these
examples have been left unchanged.