A Study On Chinese EFL Learners’ Super-segmental Features In Reading Speech

Pronunciation is an important criterion to test English proficiency. As the backbone of English phonetics, super-segmental factors play a key role in communication, realizing the functions of disambiguating, conveying information and expressing the speaker’s attitude. This study focuses on super-segmental features of senior English majors in a public university in Zhejiang Province by means of ToBI labeling. Twenty eight senior English majors and three native English speakers are required to read aloud and record the same material. Five target sentences are extracted from each participant’s recording and with the help of PRAAT, the pitch contours of these five target sentences read by each participant are produced, and after that, ToBI labeling is conducted.The super-segmental features are studied from the perspectives of prominence, phrasing and tunes. Results indicate that:(1) EFL learners use prominence more frequently, but the distinction between prominent words and unprominent words are not quite obvious, which may blur the focus of information.(2) EFL learners tend to segment the utterance into smaller chunks with fewer words in shorter time.(3) EFL learners tend to use various types of tunes in the utterance but level and falling tones are two commonly used tune types. The pitch range of their tunes is narrow, without obvious undulations. Possible causes are negative transfer from mother tongue Chinese and a lack of phonetic knowledge.Pedagogical suggestions are made to improve phonetic instructions, i.e., increasing students’ phonetic awareness, particularly their awareness of super-segmental features, and applying visual software to phonetic instructions. Limitations of and recommendations for further studies are also presented.