A Survey Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Acquisition Of English Intonation: A Functional Perspective

This thesis reports a survey study of Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of English intonation(hereafter EI in short) from a functional perspective via both impressionistic and acoustic approaches.The subjects of the present study are 60 Chinese EFL learners from Jiangsu University.The instruments are perception test,production test and semi-structured interviews.Accuracy rates of the perception and production tests are calculated so as to see to what extent the subjects have acquired the EI functions.Paired-Samples T test is carried out to explore the relationship between the subjects' perception and production of EI;and the recordings of their production are analyzed acoustically to find out the features of their intonation patterns.The major findings are as follows:1) In general,Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of EI functions is far from being satisfactory,for the average accuracy rate in perception test is 56.10%,that in production test is 57.90%,and the perfect matching between perception and production is only 18%.2) Their acquisitions of the four EI functions are not at the same level.Among the four functions in question,their competence in the attitudinal function ranked top,those in grammatical and communicative ranked the second and third,and that in informational function was at the bottom.3) No significant difference exists between Chinese EFL learners' overall performance in the perception and production of EI functions.However,significant differences are found in three categories of the EI functions,i.e.they achieved more in production of the grammatical and attitudinal functions than in perception,whereas they performed worse in their production of the communicative function than in their perception.3) In tonality,Chinese EFL learners had much shorter IPs than native English speakers and prominently,they were fond of temporal means to realize the boundaries between the IPs.4) In tonicity,improper nucleus placement is prevailing in Chinese EFL learners' production,including both unmarked and marked nuclei.5) In tone,Chinese EFL learners used few fall-rise tones where necessary and they assigned rising tone to almost all the sentences ended with question mark.This indicates Chinese EFL learners' sparse knowledge of the contextual cues to the EI functions.These findings cast light on the learning and teaching of EFL intonation in China.First, intonation problems of EFL learners should be highlighted in the daily teaching.Second, explicit instruction on the functions of EI should be integrated into the curriculum so as to develop their proper awareness and knowledge of EI.Third,EFL learners should be exposed to sufficient authentic input of EI so that they could acquire them step by step.In addition,it is highly recommended to make use of computer-based acoustic analysis software such as Praat,which can provide EFL learners with visualization of intonation patterns,to enhance their knowledge of correct intonation in different contexts.