Prominent in English Teaching for Taiwan EFL Learning 指導教授 : 鍾榮富 高師大博士生 范春銀

Chapter Four Results

1. Sentence Stress Analysis (H*) -Measure the placement: in non-contrastive context and the duration measurements of the vowels in the last content words in utterance-final and non-utterance-final position -The result : a positive improvement of a 26% increase for H* pattern in sentence stress from Time 1(pre-test) (9%) to Time 2(post-test) (37%)

Comparison between T1 and T2 in vowel duration ratios & target-likeness in sentence stress -The result : One(13%) --> Six (75%) subjects’ production was evaluated as target-like(T2) -Topic reset = Readers start a new paragraph by using an especially high pitch at the beginning of the first sentence. S1 ‘Two friends went for a walk’ S7 ‘What shall we DO?’.

2. Contrastive/Emphatic Stress Analysis (L+H*) -Measure the placement: contrastive/emphatic stress and the duration measurements of vowels in contrastive/emphatic words -The result : a significant improvement of a 40% accurate increase for L+H* pattern in contrastive/emphatic stress from Time 1 (0%) to Time 2

Comparison between T1 and T2 in vowel duration ratios & target-likeness in contrasive/emphatic stress -The result : One (13%) --> five (63%) subjects’ production was evaluated as target-like, Liu, Zhang, Jian, Chen, and Li S5 ‘Don’t say “I”, /say “WE”. S7 ‘What shall we DO?’

3.Questionnaire Analysis (Three categories) a. The first category : subjects’ starting age of English learning. -Young Starters had better prosodic awareness than that of the Later Starters

b. The second category :subjects’ awareness of L1 and L2 pronunciation difference -Young Starters took advantage of native English teachers in speaking more English and obtaining pronunciation help -Later Starters seldom had to speak English and therefore they did not receive teachers’ help with pronunciation (focus on vocabulary and reading)

C. The third category : subjects’ reactions to the prominence instruction - According to the survey, young Starters were more confident with placing stress on focus words than the Later Starters - Young Starters benefited from the familiarity of reading aloud task and past speaking experience - A positive responses to the training of prominence strategy use to stress focus words (see below) ★ Higher pitch(46%) > Longer vowel(29%) > Intuition (14%)

Chapter Five Discussion & Implication * Response RQ1- Chinese EFL learners displayed very small pitch differences between the stressed prominent words and the neighboring less stressed or unstressed words in the thought groups + very few productions of extended vowel duration of the prominent words either in sentence stress context or in contrastive/emphatic context * Response RQ2- A substantial improvement in prominence production from Time 1 to Time 2 * Response RQ3- no significant difference in learning prominence in the two contexts introduced, but more difficulties in approximation of pitch height than in vowel duration

1.The quasi-experimental study was limited in that it was a report of selected learners receiving specific prominence instruction in part of a regular college pronunciation class 2.Subjects were a small number of 8 male students from the same L1 background and the control group was limited to two English-speaking models 3.The variable of the prosodic feature of intensity was not examined, and a few variables were controlled, such as gender, speech rate, and intonation Limitations

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