Prosodic competence in reading aloud: an acoustic corpus-based study of native and non-native (Spanish) speakers of English = La competencia prosódica en la lectura de textos en voz alta: estudio de un corpus de hablantes de i

Resumen

This study focuses on the application of prosodic analysis to the assessment of pragmatic competence in learners of English as a foreign language. In it we present a comparative analysis of the way pragmatic information is conveyed by native and non-native EFL teachers reading stories aloud. In English intonation realises the organization of information structure in spoken discourse, and communication between speakers develops through the interplay between given (old) and new information –marked in English by the placement of the tonic stress. Competent speakers in English are able to combine the conceptual status of given and new with its expression through tonicity. Another relevant aspect lies in the selection of tones made by native and non-native readers and how this affects the pragmatic interpretation of the text. The lack of connection between prosodic selection and pragmatic meaning by non-native readers makes listeners resort to their knowledge of the world in order to obtain all the information that should have been provided by prosody. To sum up, we suggest that the awareness of intonation patterns has important implications for the theoretical and practical approaches to language teaching.