Evaluation of monotony in the perception of the message in the oral reading in English
Main Article Content
Abstract
Communicative oral reading implies the use of prosodic features that allow the reader to organize the oral text to facilitate its interpretation. At the School of Languages, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, the oral reading is a central topic of the subject Phonetics and Phonology II in the EFL courses. Despite that training, an important number of students still produce inefficient readings.
This is why we decided to explore whether students employ the basic prosodic features of prominence, tone, pitch level and pause in contexts other than that of Phonetics and Phonology II. In this research article we analyze a student´s production evaluated as inefficient and monotonous by external judges. We also looked into the comprehensibility level of this oral reading. The results indicate that the basic prosodic features have not been efficiently used and that comprehensibility was below the expected level.
Downloads
Article Details
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work [SPECIFY PERIOD OF TIME] after publication simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Zona Próxima
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work
References
Alcántara, D. (2009). La importancia de la lectura en voz alta. Innovación y Experiencias Educativas, 16 [En línea]. Recuperado de http://www.csi-csif.es/andalucia/modules/mod_ense/revista/pdf/Numero_16/DOLORES_ALCANTARA_2.pdf
Alisedo, G., Melgar, S. & Chiocci, C. (1994). Didáctica de las ciencias del lenguaje: aportes y reflexiones. Buenos Aires: Paidós Educador.
Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R., & Koehler, K. (1992). The relationship between native speaker judgements of nonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmental, prosody and syllable structure. Language Learning, 42, 529-555.
Ashby, M. (2006). Prosody and idioms in English. Journal of Pragmatics 38(10), 1580-1597.
Ashby, J. & Clifton, C., Jr. (2005) The prosodic property of lexical stress affects eye movements in silent reading: evidence from eye movements. Cognition, 96, B89-B100.
Barr, P. (1990). The role of discourse intonation in lecture comprehension. En M. Hewings (Ed.), Papers in Discourse Intonation (pp. 5-21). University of Birmingham: English Language Research.
Benjamin, R.G. & Schwanenflugel, P.J. (2010). Text complexity and oral reading prosody in young learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(4), 388-404.
Brazil, D., Coulthard, M. & Johns, C. (1980). Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching. London: Longman.
Brazil, D. (1992). Listening to people reading. En M. Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in spoken discourse analysis (pp. 207-241), London: Routledge.
Brazil, D. (1997). The Communicative value of intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, G., Currie, K.L. & Kenworthy, J. (1980). Questions of intonation. London: Croom Helm.
Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1986). An introduction to English prosody. London: Edward Arnold.
Cruttenden, A. (1997). (2nd ed.). Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Derwing, T.M., & Munro, M.J. (1997). Accent, intelligibility, and comprehensibility: evidence from four L1s. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 1-16.
Derwing, T.M. & Munro, M.J. (2005). Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: a researchbased approach. Tesol Quarterly, 39, 379-397.
Fainholc, B. (2005). La lectura crítica en Internet. Lectura y Vida, 26, 38-51.
Flowerdew, J. (Ed.). (1994). Academic listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gabrielatos, C. (1996). Reading allowed?: reading aloud in TEFL. Current Issues, 9, 7-8.
Gutiérrez-Palma, N. & Palma Reyes, A. (2007). Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: a study with children. Journal of Research in Reading, 30 (2), 157-168.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). An Introduction to functional grammar. London: E. Arnold.
Hansen, C. (1994). Topic identification in lecture discourse. En J. Flowerdew, (Ed.), Academic Listening: Research perspectives (pp. 131-145). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hidalgo Navarro, A. (1997). La entonación coloquial: función demarcativa y unidades de habla. Valencia: Soler.
Hincks, R. (2005). Measures and perceptions of liveliness in student oral presentation speech: a proposal for an automatic feedback mechanism. System, 33, 575-591.
Hincks, R. (2010). Speaking rate and information content in English lingua franca oral presentations. English for Specific Purposes, 29 (1), 4-18.
Kang, O. (2010). Relative salience of suprasegmental features on judgements of L2 comprehensibility and accentedness. System, 38, 301-315.
Kang, O., Rubin, D. & Pickering, L. (2010). Suprasegmental measures of accentedness and judgements of language learner proficiency in oral English. The Modern Language Journal, 00, 1-13.
Morley, J. (1994). A multidimensional curriculum design for speech-pronunciation Instruction. En J. Morley, (Ed.), Pronunciation Pedagogy and Theory. New Views, New Directions (pp. 64-91). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Morra, A.M. & Soler, L.R. (1999). La estructura de la conferencia en inglés. Revista de lengua para fines específicos, 5-6, 375-392, Departamento de Filología Moderna, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Morra, A.M. & Soler, L.R. (2000). El desarrollo de estrategias para la comprensión del discurso académico en inglés como L2. Lenguas Modernas, 26-27, 65-77.
Ospina Torres, E. (2004). La lectura en voz alta: vestíbulo para la comprensión Lectora. [en línea]. Recuperado de http://cybertesis.udea.edu.co/udea/2004/ospina_e/html/index-frames.html
Pamies Bertrán, A., Fernández Planas, A.M., Martínez Celdrán, E., Ortega Escandell, A., & Amorós Céspedes, M.C. (2002). Umbrales tonales en español peninsular. Ponencia presentada en el Congreso Nacional de Fonética Experimental. Universidad de Sevilla.
Pickering, L. (1999). An analysis of prosodic systems in the classroom discourse of native speaker and nonnative speaker teaching assistants. [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universidad de Florida.
Pickering, L. (2004). The structure and function of intonational paragraphs in native and nonnative speaker instructional discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 23, 19-43.
Rost, M. (1990). Listening in Language Learning. England: Longman.
Schwegler, A. & Kempff, J. (2007). Fonética y fonología españolas. (3a ed.). EEUU: John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, C. (2004). Topic transitions and durational prosody in reading aloud: production and modeling. Speech Communication, 42, 247-270.
Tench, P. (1996). The Intonation systems of English. London: Cassell.
Thompson, S.E. (2003). Text-structuring in metadis-course, intonation and the signaling of organization in academic lectures. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 5-20.
Wichmann, A. (2000). Intonation in text and discourse. Essex: Pearson Education.
Yule, G. (1980). Speakers' topics and major para-tones. Lingua, 52, 33-47.