Is intonation learnable in the classroom? Evidence from Turkish learners of English

Abstract

For language learners, intonation is widely considered to be important in communicating meaning in context, but intonation is also considered by teachers to be difficult to teach, and some have even argued that it may be unteachable. This exploratory study examines whether explicit teaching of three final intonation contours (falling, rising, falling–rising) led to improved perception and production. Thirty-one Turkish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) participated in a three-week training session on the perception and production of the three contours at the end of a course on English pronunciation. Results from a pre-test/post-test design showed that perception of all three intonation contours improved after instruction, whereas for the production only the falling–rising and rising contours showed improvement. Results also showed that providing contextual information did not affect production but was helpful in perception. This study suggests intonation can improve when it is explicitly taught to L2 learners, like other aspects of pronunciation.