Raising EFL students' awareness of English intonation functioning

摘要

The study investigates the importance of EFL (English as a foreign language) students' awareness of English extended pitch sequences realised within complex utterances and text sub-topics. Considering these higher levels of intonation functioning alongside with the tone group turned out to be crucial for adequate intonation production by Russian learners of English. The experimental group of university students (n = 12) and the control group (n = 12) involved in a 10-week teaching experiment demonstrated different levels of reading intelligibility depending on whether they had been taught these sequences or not. According to the listening experts, the experimental group supplied with an algorithm of connecting the pitch sequences with meaning showed 43% higher results in text information structuring and 21% better results in producing L2 (second language) intonation forms than the control group. The necessity of special efforts on the part of the students to master these levels of L2 intonation organisation might indicate that they are language-specific and are likely to vary in their communicative value from language to language.