A Comparative Study Of Focus Realization In Chinese EFL Learners’ Spontaneous And Prepared Speech

Focus is a semantic phenomenon in utterance for communicative purposes, which influences the effectiveness of communication. Nucleus is the pervasive means of focus realization in oral English. The present study made a comparative investigation on focus realization in Chinese EFL learners’ prepared and spontaneous speech.The data used for present study were the recordings from 22 participants in CCTV English Speech Contest Jiangsu Final. With the software Praat, the data were labeled using TextGrid, the transcription of words, boundary of intonation groups, and nuclear tones. After that, the data based on labeling or generated by Praat were transferred to EXCEL for analysis. The present study concentrated on nucleus placement and the kinetics, the pitch range of the focus in learners’ prepared and spontaneous speech.Findings showed that the percentage of final lexical nucleus placement(unmarked focus)in prepared speech is higher than in spontaneous speech. They use more simple tones(falls and rises) in prepared speech than spontaneous speech. The learners used both falling tones and rising tones to highlight new information in prepared and spontaneous speech. Rising tones for new information are used more in prepared than spontaneous speech. In the present study the learners showed a wider pitch range of nucleus in prepared speech than spontaneous speech.The findings in the present study have not only revealed the similarity and the difference of EFL learners’ prepared and spontaneous speech, but also shed light on specific problems in learners’ oral English — the focus realization, which will cause misunderstanding, and it calls for more attention in oral English course Also, this study has added to the empirical research about EFL learners’ spontaneous speech, which was much less discussed than prepared speech.