Teaching English Intonation
AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT

A Master’s Dissertation

by
Tahir Ali Khan

School of Language and Literature,
King’s College Aberdeen


TEACHING ENGLISH INTONATION
(an action research project)

A master’s dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of
MLitt in English Linguistics for Advanced Teachers of English
at the University of Aberdeen.

by

TAHIR ALI KHAN

Supervised by: Dr. Mark Garner

School of Language and Literature,
University of Aberdeen
2010


Teaching English Intonation

by Tahir Ali Khan

Abstract
Intonation is an area of language that is seldom explored from the perspective of teaching.
This dissertation will examine the different contours of intonation and the transferability
of intonation through teaching for non-native speaker of English. Through action research
the participants of this research project will try to explore the best way to teach
intonation. Being research participants at the same time they will also try to devise a
framework for teaching intonation. In order to do this two cycles of teaching will be
devised in order to ensure that the second round will be free of the flaws of the first
session of teaching. In order to check if the teaching sessions have any bearing on the
improved practice two types of data will be collected. One in the form of researchers’
individual journals and the other in the form of audio pre-test and post-test consisting of
12 sentences and short interviews to be conducted before and after each round of
teaching. This data will then be analysed qualitatively as well as quantitatively.
The qualitative data from Journals showed that most of the participants felt an improved
sense in practice while voicing their areas of difficulty. Whereas the audio data was judged
by three volunteer native-speakers which was then quantitatively analysed for statistical
significance through SPSS. The audio results were also promising especially when it comes
to the spontaneous interviews, whereas, though the sentences showed improvement,
statistically speaking the probability was around 50%.
Though inconclusive in its findings due to several constraints of time and other resources
that the project suffers from it was still highly appreciated and student researchers
participated enthusiastically. Further research incrementing on the findings of this research
will hopefully bring a positive change in intonational pedagogy.


Declaration

The work submitted in this dissertation is the result of my own investigation,

except where otherwise stated.
It has not already been accepted for any degree, and is also not being concurrently
submitted for any other degree.

Tahir Ali Khan

We/I endorse the declaration by the candidate.

Dr Mark Garner


To

my

visionary

Mother

who

means

the

world

to

me!


i


Acknowledgement
The greatest thanks, by far, go to my supervisor Dr Mark Garner who has been a constant
source of encouragement, and inspiration. His constant support throughout the project as
well as during my stay at the university has been instrumental and without his guidance
this work would not have come to fruition.
Many a sincere thanks go to Dr Haishang Jiang for his insightful teaching sessions during
the undertaking of this project. I cannot thank fully Dr Barbara Fennell for her kind
support during my time at the university. To Dr Mercedes Durham and Dr Robert McColl
Miller for their help during my course of study I shall always remain indebted. Thanks are
also due to all the staff at the school of language and literature, University of Aberdeen.
Last but not least thanks to all of my family and friends, especially my elder brother Zard
Ali Khan, whose encouragement and support has brought me to study here in the UK.

ii


Contents
Dedication................................................................................................................................ i
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................... ii
Contents................................................................................................................................. iii
Figures and Tables ...................................................................................................................v
Chapter I: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1
Background ....................................................................................................................... 1
Research Aim and Focus ................................................................................................... 3
Value of This Research ...................................................................................................... 3
Chapter II: Literature Review.................................................................................................. 5

What is Intonation? ........................................................................................................... 5
Form of Intonation ............................................................................................................ 6
English Intonation ............................................................................................................. 8
Models of Intonation and Research in Applied Linguistics................................................ 9
Research Methodology: Action research ......................................................................... 11
Studies in Teaching Intonation ........................................................................................ 12
Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 14
Chapter III: Research Methods ............................................................................................. 15
Introduction..................................................................................................................... 15
Research Strategy ............................................................................................................ 16
Research Paradigm .......................................................................................................... 17
Data Collection: Site and Sampling Method.................................................................... 22
Data Collection Techniques............................................................................................. 24
Framework for Data Analysis.......................................................................................... 25
Chapter IV: Findings & Discussion....................................................................................... 27
Description of Findings.................................................................................................... 27
Journals’ Data ................................................................................................................. 27
Interest about the Programme ........................................................................................ 29
Participants' Attitude Towards the Teaching .................................................................. 30
Participation of the Students ........................................................................................... 31
Comments or Feelings of the Effectiveness of the Teaching/Teacher/Methods ............... 32
iii


Can you apply what you have learned in everyday speech? And in what ways? ............. 36
Impact of the Teaching and Personal Feelings about the Whole Learning
(General feelings) ............................................................................................................ 37
Audio Recorded Data ...................................................................................................... 40
Discussion of the Results ................................................................................................. 47
Journals’ Data ................................................................................................................. 47

Audio Data...................................................................................................................... 48
Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 49
Appendix A: Round 1 Teaching Material from EnglishPronunciation in Use (Advanced) .... 50
Appendix B: Pre-Test and Post-Test Sentences for Utterance with Context & Round 1
Task2 (Interview) ............................................................................................................ 53
Appendix C: Criteria for Judges (Pre- and Post-Test)............................................................ 56
Appendix D: Consolidated Audio Results from Judges......................................................... 58
Appendix E: Pitch Variation Across the Participants’ Utterances .......................................... 61
References ............................................................................................................................. 79

iv


Figures and Tables
Figure/Table

Page

Intonational Notation Schemes
Bot and Mailfret (1982) Experimental Results
McNiff’s Latest Action Research Process
McNiff’s Original Action Research Process
Table 1 Round 1 Correlations
Table 2 Round 2 Correlations
Table 3 Round 1 Sentences Correlations
Table 4 Round 2 Sentences Correlation
Table 5 Round 1 Sentences Pairs Samples Test
Table 6 Round 2 Sentences Pairs Samples Test
Table 7 Round 1 Interviews Correlations
Table 8 Round 2 Interviews Correlations


7
13
19
20
42
44
45
45
46
46
46
47

v


Introduction
Background
Being the undisputed lingua franca of the world English language has reached almost
every corner of the world with more and more people learning it for so many reasons.
Even countries where English has no colonial history are now turning to English in order
to understand the rich knowledge of science and technology available mostly in English
only. The domain of research is almost solely occupied by the English language with
researchers bound to present their fresh research in English so as to be able to reach a
global research audience. According to a British Council report the number of people
learning English will reach its peak in the next 10-15 years which might be as early as
2010 with some estimated 2 billion people from around the world learning English
(Graddol, 2006). In the wake of these developments the area of English Language
Teaching (ELT) has grown tremendously with hundreds, if not thousands, of titles coming

to the market every year. English language is hence the most researched language in the
world. From the largest historical dictionary (the Oxford English Dictionary) to the
publication of a thesaurus in 1852 English language has been setting standards for all
other languages. Same is the case with the ELT material with grammar books for natives
as well as non-natives of the language in mass production since the nineteenth century.
Situation during the colonial era and the ensuing economic and technological superiority
of the English speaking countries during the post colonial period up to the present day has
revolutionised the ELT and learning resources. Almost all aspects of the English language
have been meticulously investigated in the previous century. Take any aspect of the
English language and you can find a host research material. As for as applied linguistics is
concerned there is abundance of resource material on almost every aspect of the English
language. Yet the illusive nature of intonation has been a reason for its being left in the
hands of theoreticians only with no or very few pedagogical examples in the everyday ELT
material. Even handbooks on the pronunciation of English language and books about
English phonology usually make a cursory mention of the subject only. This situation has
lead to an almost freeze on intonation teaching in the wider ELT community. Despite this
virtual stagnation in applied linguistics on intonation the value and importance of
intonation in linguistic meaning is attested to by researchers as well as ELT practitioners
alike.
1


Research Aim and Focus
Knowledge of the present ELT material on intonation inform us about the very limited
role of intonation. Its teaching practice inside the classroom environment is almost nonexistent. The issue of intonation is sidelined more so by the fact that English is now a
global language with more and more second language teachers of English coming to meet
the demands of the growing number of people turning to English. Being non-native
themselves these teachers impart English language skills that are almost free from the
natural intonational patterns that the native speakers of English use in their day-to-day
business.

Being a course in linguistics for ‘advanced teachers of English’ it was highly felt that this
area of study be investigated further with the aim of improving practice. As most of the
students in this course come from second language background and are expected to
become teachers of English as a second language an investigation into intonation teaching
would serve two purposes. Firstly an experiment of this kind would open up new vistas of
transfer of intonational skills to second language learners, in our case experienced users of
English. Secondly being in direct contact with the native speakers the participants of this
experiment would learn natural contours of intonation directly from native speakers along
with critical insights from experienced linguists on the said topic. This would help these
would-be teachers of English to transfer what they have learnt here in non-native settings.
This project would also provide a platform for an insight into a correlation between the
intonation of English and other global languages from around the world which the
participants of this course are drawn from.
This research project does not claim to be conclusive about its findings yet it is hoped that
it would help future research in exploring the problems faced by second language learners
in acquiring English intonation. Neither does it claim to be replicable in every situation.
Despite the fact that the sample size for this research is in no way representative of the
wider ELT community as the individual participants themselves have variation with regard
to proficiency in English and the amount of English use on a daily basis with native
speakers. Being set in a native language environment the participants are also likely to be
influenced by other factors (including more use of English out of necessity in parley with
the native speakers outside the class) surrounding their life in an English country which
may have a bearing on their language ability. However, it would not be the case in other
2


settings for example in a non-native setting, and probably the most frequent of situations,
where the only place for practice is the classroom learners are not likely to be influenced
by their environment outside the class.
The fundamental premise of this experimental project is to investigate the effect of

teaching in second language acquisition of intonation and the transferability of intonation
through such practice. To achieve this goal the experiment would draw on the experience
of expert linguists in the field along with input from the participants (themselves
experienced teachers of English) who would voice their problems or suggest
improvements. Within such a context the objectives of this research are:
1. Identify the important intonation patterns necessary for the teaching of English to
students of other tongues.
2. Evaluate critically the models and frameworks of teaching Intonation within the
context of English language teaching and try to devise course material and teaching
practice for the actual teaching sessions.
3. Critically explore the progress of the participants of this research project and the
hurdles in their way of achieving a native-like intonational standing complemented
by their views themselves in several ways.
4. Formulate recommendations with regard to the teaching of Intonation in English
language classes.
It would however be a mistake by the reader to view these objectives as detached and
disparate activities. These activities are necessarily interlinked to form a composite whole.
With these objectives in mind this research is aimed to contribute critical mass of data for
the continued development of this discipline in a number of significant ways. The result
findings will be made available to the public and placed online for the future researcher in
the field.

Value of This Research
The literature review presents a brief overview of the available research on intonation and
its employment in the English language teaching. Based on this information we assume
that although there have been previously experiments in teaching intonation to speakers of
other languages it is the first time that a systematic research is being carried out involving
teaching based on several resources and ideas taken from ELT textbooks in the market
3



and utilising computers and other AV aids along innovative teaching techniques for the
teaching of intonation.
The importance of this research doubles with the employment of action research as a
methodology to investigate this phenomenon. Being an increasingly used methodology in
ELT environment, action research lends a useful opportunity to investigate intonation and
its teaching in two cycles. Although further research is highly recommended in order to be
conclusive about its outcome the two cycles of the project would try to ensure that the
results that we arrive at after the experiment are consistent with our expectation that is the
transferability of intonation skills to second language learners through teaching.
The following chapter introduces the idea of intonation in general and then examines the
critical mass of theoretical as well as literature in applied linguistics and looks forward to
the way ahead.

4


Literature Review
This chapter tries to introduce the subject of intonation and its form and how it is
transcribed on paper. It then focuses on intonation in English and its five different forms
followed by the a summary of the different models of intonation and the research in
applied linguistics. It also informs about action research and the rationale for its being
used for this project. Finally it provides a brief introduction of some of the studies in
teaching intonation and their limitations.

Native speakers of English according to Wells (2006, 2) usually make allowances for
segmental errors in foreign learners’ pronunciation of English but they do not do so with
regard to intonation as they don’t realise that intonation can be erroneous too. They
assume that with regard to intonation you mean what you say and not what you think
you are saying. And because several patterns of intonation are possible in English a wrong

choice of intonation patterns may, sometimes, lead to unforeseen problems for a foreign
learner. In the past the issue of intonation was treated mostly as a theoretical rather than
practical concern and was ignored in the past for many years in language teaching but due
to advancement in linguistic theory along with the growing use of technological tools in
speech synthesis there has been a renewed interest in intonational research (Chun 2002).

What is Intonation?
According to the OED intonation (sense 4) is a “manner of utterance of the tones of the
voice in speaking; modulation of the voice; accent” and records the first use of intonation
in English language by Thomas Newte in “A tour in England and Scotland in 1785”:

“The people of Inverness…are not only free from that
unfortunate intonation of Aberdeenshire…but speak the
English language with greater purity than they do in any
other part in Scotland.”

In linguistic terms intonation is classed under the suprasegmental phonology which also
5


includes such elements as tone, and stress. The subject of intonation has been a matter of
considerable vagueness from its definition to its application to the actual classroom setting
although in its restricted sense, “intonation refers to the variations in the pitch of a
speaker’s voice used to convey or alter meaning” (Roach, 2009). However, intonation, in
its broader sense, is “used to cover much the same field as ‘prosody’, where variations in
such things as voice quality, tempo and loudness are included” (ibid). Thus, intonation is
the pattern of pitch changes that occur during speech where pitch is “the auditory
property of a sound that enables a listener to place it on a scale going from low to high,
without considering the acoustic properties, such as the frequency of the sound”
(Ladefoged, 1982: 284, 168).


O’Connor and Arnold (1973) affirm that they do not know any language which is spoken
on a monotone; variations of pitch accompany languages usually though languages differ
in their pitch variations. Kingdon (1958) comments that:

Not all syllables are uttered on a fixed pitch; there is a fairly continuous rise and fall in the
pitch of the voice, and furthermore, for purposes of expression, intentional changes in
pitch are produced while certain syllables are being uttered. (p.1)

Form of Intonation
Pitch of the voice may be described as being high or low or in between. It should be
remembered that “high and low are arbitrary choices for end-points of the pitch scale”
(Roach, 1991). According to Roach for pitch differences to be linguistically significant,
two requirements are necessary: pitch differences should be under the control of the
speaker and secondly they should be perceptible.

Change in pitch correlates with the change in frequency. Frequency is “the rate of
variation in air pressure in a sound” (Ladefoged, 1982: 282). It also refers to “the number
of complete cycles (opening and closing movements) of vocal cord vibration in a unit of
time (per second)” (Crystal, 1985: 131). Gimson (1989: 20) believes that the air particles
vibrate at the same rate as the original vibrator. Thus vibration may be of a complex but
regular pattern producing “tone” such as producing vowels. In addition, vibration may be
6


of an irregular pattern producing “noise” such as producing the [s] sound. Vibration
might slightly be both regular and irregular, i.e. “a combination of tone and noise”, as in
producing the sound [z] (ibid). When the vocal folds vibrate, they produce the
fundamental frequency ( F0 ) which is “a basic vibration over their whole lengths” and a
number of “overtones (or harmonics)” which are simple multiples of the fundamental

frequency such as F1, F2, F3, … etc. (ibid). Accordingly, “we hear a high pitch if the rate
of vibration is high and a low pitch if the rate of vibration is low” (Roach, 2009).

One might refer to pitch in terms of tones. The word tone is representative of the “overall
behaviour of the pitch” (Roach, 1991). Tone can be defined as “the distinctive pitch level
of a syllable” (Crystal, 1985: 309). Moreover, it refers to “identifiable movement or level
of pitch that is used in a linguistically contrastive way” (Roach, 2009). A tone language is
the language where word meaning is dependent on pitch level (op. cit.). For example, in
Mandarin the word /ma/ said on a high pitch means “mother” but “a horse” when said
with a fall-rise tone (see Roach, 1991: 116, Crystal, 1985: 309, and Roach, 2009). In tone
languages, the substitution of one distinctive tone for another on a particular word may
result in altering its meaning or its aspect of grammatical categorization (Roach, 1991).

For notational purposes no single model has yet been taken up as a standard and different
people in the field use different notational schemes which is a reminder of the earlier
versions of musical tablature. These include:

Figure 1

a) the “scrolling typewriter” system used by Bolinger (1989), (b) the “four line” technique
7


d
asd
ga
tte
ceg(d
)ea
yao

ve
at
b
tcb

of Gårding (1983), (c) the “close-copy stylization” used by Collier and ‘t Hart (1981), (d)
the “interlinear-tonetic transcription” (Cook: 2002, 103).

English Intonation
O’Connor and Arnold, (1973) argue that English intonation is based on three major
premises that: (1) intonation is significant; accordingly, one can utter the same utterance
with different intonation patterns and as a result he can capture different meanings, (2)
intonation is systematic; the idea of systematization stems from the belief that each
language has its own limited number of tunes and one learns these tunes in his childhood,
therefore, a person does not invent tunes rather he uses the tunes he learnt originally in a
systematic way, not haphazardly, (3) intonation is characteristic; since each language has
its restricted number of tunes the application of a specific tune of one language on another
language may seem to be vague and does not indicate the intended impression. This does
not rule out the possibility that the use of some tunes of one language may resemble the
use of the tunes of another language, but serious and dangerous difficulties of
miscommunication may arise due to the invalid use of pitch patterns.

Roach (1991) has dedicated five chapters in his book to the treatment of intonation due to
its complex nature. Although there is considerable variation in the analyses of tones within
the research community with some realising the distinction between “high fall” and “low
fall” and others having a set of tones “fall-rise-fall” and “rise-fall-rise” (O’Connor and
Arnold
1973
Crystal
1969).

He,im
on
the
other
y •)
) whiand
ch u
suall
uall
all
lll y gi
i vee s an
m
pr
r ess
sss i on
off fihand,
i nal
all ity
tyylists
. five contours of intonation in
English namely:
1.

Fall (indicated by •) which usually gives an impression of finality.

2.

h” a
att ed

d b•)
•)) w
hii ch
h isimpression
s used
sed
ed
d “a lot
ott continuation.
y •giving
i n Engll i sh
by
an
of
( i ndii cat
Rise (indicated

3.

Fall-Rise (indicated by ••) which is used “a lot in English” and has some rather

special
functions.
( i ndicat
icat
cat
att e d by •••
4.

Rise-Fall (indicated by ••) and used to convey strong feelings of “approval,


disapproval or surprise”.
5.

Level (indicated by • ) and used to convey feelings of “saying something routine,

uninteresting or boring”.
8


However, he cautions against rigid rules to affix meanings to these contours and instead
treats the above generalities as merely indicative of the norms and not the exceptions as in
certain contexts other contours may be possible.

Models of Intonation and Research in Applied Linguistics
Fox (2000: p 277-287) and Roach (1991, 140-143) recount the progress in intonational
research made since 1920s by scholars from not only the theoretical linguistics but rather
more pedagogically oriented scholars for whom the theoretical framework has not always
been their prime concern. These include the Prague school with scholars like Karcevskij
(1931) and Trubetzkoy (1939). The British tradition originated from the work of German
scholar Klinghardt and Fourmestraux (1911), Klinghardt and Klemm (1920), and
Klinghardt (1927) which was taken up by Coleman (1914), and Palmer (1922),
Armstrong and Ward (1926) and further developed by Kingdon (958). O'Connor and
Arnold (1961), followed the same tradition in their widely used textbook. Halliday’s work
on intonation (Halliday, 19633, 1963b 1967, 1970) provided the British school with a
more theoretical treatment. The American Structuralist tradition include Bloomfield
(1935), Harris (1944), Pike (1945), Wells (1945), and Trager and Smith (1951). Stockwell
(1960) tried to reconcile the Trager/Smith analysis with the formal framework of
Chomsky's early transformational model. Among scholars in the Lund school are Fujisaki
and Nagashima, (1969), and especially Garding and her associates (Bruce, 1977; Bruce

and Garding, 1978; Garding, 1981, 1983) but their work was primarily on Swedish
language which has since then been applied to several other languages. And finally the
Dutch school included scholars like Cohen and 't Hart (1967, 1973) 't Hart and Collier,
(1975) 't Hart, Collier, and Cohen, (1990).

Levis (1999) points out six findings from the theoretical knowledge of the past and current
pedagogical practice and which can inform the practice of teaching intonation. These
involve:
(a)

the placement of significant pitch in an intonational phrase; which entails that even

though every voiced sound intrinsically carries pitch information not all syllables are
associated with pitch in a significant way. This results in a few syllables standing out in a
given phrase. In this respect Bolinger asserts that English has a salient “nearisochrony (ie
9


the tendency to have equal intervals of time between accentual peaks)” (Chun 2002, 171).
(b)

pitch levels, which according to his assertion should be simpler ie requiring the

teaching of high and low only instead of the usual norm of complex three, four or five
levels.
(c)

listeners' perceptions of intonation, which means that listeners hear intonation

according to internal phonological categories inside their brain patterns rather than

according to acoustic phonetic realities. In case where the learner’s L1 has different
intonation patterns than English he is likely to have difficulty in mastering his L2
intonation. In this respect results in Kees de Bot and Kate Mailfert (1982) show that four
aspects of pitch change are perceptually relevant: (1) direction of pitch change (rise, fall, or
level), (2) range of pitch change (difference between high and low levels), (3) speed of
pitch change (how abruptly or gradually the change happens), and (4) place of pitch
change in sentence, word, or syllable.
(d)

intonation patterns, where he suggests for more than two intonation patterns that

are in vogue ie rising and falling. Instead he suggests at least a third pattern if not many
and that is a falling-rising pattern. He also lists other researchers findings related to the
number of patterns in English with Ladd (1980) having five, Pierrehumbert (1980) with a
long list of 24 of which most are found in English and Gussenhoven (1983) having three
basic patterns for English, each of which can in turn be modified to produce other
patterns.
(e)

the use of high and low pitch for nuclear stress, where he illustrates that past

practice in textbooks usually recognise a rising pitch at the tonic syllable but argues for the
recognition of low-pitch intonation pattern at the start of the tonic syllable.
(f)

the placement of tonic syllable, where he discusses the theoretical legacy of

Halliday’s (1967) “given and new information” and its incorporation into the textbooks
and Brazil’s (1984) dependency of the tonic syllable onto the speaker’s intentions. He also
cites Cruttenden’s (1990) emphasis on word classes which also echoes in Dickerson

(1989).
Thus Levis (1999) comes up with four principles for intonation teaching materials namely:
(a) that intonation must be taught in context, (b) that intonational meanings must be
generalizable, (c) that the teaching of intonation should be subordinate to larger
communicative purposes and (d) that intonation be taught within the context of real
language.
10


Research Methodology: Action Research
Every research project follows a certain pattern which distinguishes it from others. There
are several well established research methodologies, eg case study, survey, ethnography
experimental research, historical research, grounded theory and action research, all of
them being used to help researchers in different fields of enquiry to arrive at a result that is
expected of any research undertaking. Yet the issue of suitability is taken quite seriously in
the beginning of every research endeavour because a wrong choice of methodology might
result in unexpected consequences. Hence researchers look at the pros as cons of all the
available research strategies that can be taken and then choose the most appropriate one
for their research objectives. Of the above methodologies action research is a quite recent
development which is most importantly and increasingly being used in ELT settings to
investigate into linguistic phenomena.

Kurt Lewin in his paper "Action Research and Minority Problems (1946)" defined action
research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of
social action and research leading to social action" involving " a spiral of steps, each of
which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the
action." Thus action research is a process of solving problems through reflection led by
individuals working with others in teams in order to improve the way they address
common issues.


Action research has been worked on in the past sixty years and has now been recognised
as a valid form of enquiry. At the moment three distinct developmental trends are visible
in the literature of action research: an interpretive, a critical theoretic and a living theory
approach; where the first two work at observational and descriptive level and the third
recognises the importance of the individual practitioners as "living contradictions".
From the action researcher’s perspective, McNiff & Whitehead (2002, 16-19) assert, that
people are able to create their own identities while allowing others to create theirs. Even in
the face of different or contrastive values they try to find ways of accommodating multiple
values and perspectives.
11


In the traditional views of scientific enquiry knowledge is seen as a free-standing entity,
with an existence of its own, residing ‘out there’ in books and databases. Accordingly,
knowledge is divorced from the people who create it. Action researchers see knowledge as
something they do, a living process. Learning in this view is founded in experience and
reflection on the experience of practice and decision making based on whether the practice
was in conformity with the espoused values, and planning for the future action as a result
of this reflection.

Studies in Teaching Intonation
Bot and Mailfert’s (1982) research focuses mainly on the perception of intonation and was
carried out in the Netherlands, then adapted for pedagogical purposes and applied in
Kodak-Pathé in-company English courses in France. Results confirmed the Dutch findings
but suggested still further adaptations in intonation teaching. This study was based on
Collier and ‘t Hart (1978) Course on Dutch Intonation. The 15 subjects were first divided
into two groups: a controlled group of 5 students and an experimental group of 10
students who were asked do a pre-test of imitating 12 sentences that they heard in
language laboratory followed by a 13-minute introduction-to-intonation tape for the
experimental group only while the controlled “got only the pre-test and the post-test to

control for the effect of using the same test twice”. The rating of the tests was done by
three non-native EFL teachers using a five-point scale. In the Dutch experiment the
introduction was in Dutch but for French settings the language was changed to English.
Also in the second phase of the experiment the tape was edited to include a humourus
story read with British and then again an American intonation while ending the tape with
a self-correctable exercise.
The results of this small-scale experiment tend to confirm the findings from applied
linguistics that improved perception of intonation lead to improved production.

12


Figure 2

Yong's (2004) action research project during 2002-2003 was conducted in Guyuan
Teachers College (China) and is based on two premises for effective second language
learning i.e. focus on the mastery of English sound system and the correct production
thereafter. Students were divided according to their College Entrance Examination and
Proficiency Tests. He came up with some marked improvement through the results of his
enquiry. Unfortunately, this project touched the issue of intonation very briefly.

In Singapore an action research by Heng et al (2007) on pronunciation aimed at
improving the oral interaction inside the English language classroom was carried in 2001.
Although not specifically a course in intonation this action research project tried to
13


increase the effectiveness of students’ communicative competence, by giving them
guidelines about “how and where they could improve”. As a result the students had an
improved feeling from 81.84% to 84.84% that they could speak with “correct”

intonation (pitch levels). The research employed pre and post-test recordings and asked
the students and teachers to have reflection journals. Data gathered was then analysed
through a “thematic analysis” using “triangulation” for validation of claims. Rubrics were
included in the journals for verbal and non-verbal competencies that were aimed at. For
measuring students’ progress they also employed “strategies for active and independent
learning” over different sessions.

Conclusion
The above discussion of the topic and studies in pedagogical concerns about the issue of
intonation illustrate that although the phenomenon of intonation may be abstract and not
easy to grasp for foreign learners of English it is not an impossible task and an informed
approach, based on sound theoretical foundation and findings from the field of applied
linguistics, can be taken to facilitate its learning in actual classroom environment. In this
regard the present research would try to highlight the inherent issues associated with the
teaching of intonation. Moreover, the students being teachers of English would be in a
better position to give the present project their own insight through action research. Also
their own participation in the project from the curriculum design and decision making
stage to the actual realisation of the experiment would be an added quality of the present
approach. Change in this respect cannot only be expected from the change in material but
also in our approach to the teaching practice.

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Research Methods
Introduction
There are a number of research objectives envisioned by this research study for the
teaching of English intonation especially to:

1. Identify the important intonation patterns necessary for the teaching of English to

students of other tongues.
2. Evaluate critically the models and frameworks of teaching Intonation within the
context of English language teaching and try to devise course material and teaching
practice for the actual teaching sessions.
3. Critically explore the progress of the participants of this research project and the
hurdles in their way of achieving a native-like intonational standing complemented by
their views themselves in several ways.
4. Formulate recommendations with regard to the teaching of Intonation in English
language classes.

One important aspect of this research work is associated with objective 3; i.e. the
opportunity to give a fresh insight into the teaching of intonation in an English
language teaching programme; to study the importance of intonational meanings in
native language communication; and to try to work out a framework for teaching
intonation and measure the progress of the participants over the two proposed cycles
of the present research project for the impact of intonational teaching. This is done in
order to come up with some fresh findings into this important aspect of language
communication. This, however, has been highlighted in theoretical and pedagogical
circles since 1920s yet seldom given any real and due place in the ESL courses and
course material partly due to its illusive nature because of the complexities involved in
coming up with some tangible rules for conveying intonational meaning and partly
because of the dearth of teaching material available to ESL circles.

Chapter 2 (“Literature Review”) highlighted some of the issues involved in the existing
research on intonation and the practical considerations thereof in actual classroom
setting. Although it is highly recommended by the experts in the field of phonology
that intonation be part of any good course in ELT the dearth of original experimental
research into the field of intonation only made it almost a theoretical consideration
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never to be of any practical value. An important contribution of this research project is
to the study and analysis of experimental data on how foreign language students (in
this instance mostly teachers of English as a foreign language) learn the different
intonation patterns of English and what are the practical lessons that can be learnt
from their experience of a course in intonation. Objective 1 and 2 were addressed to
some extent in the literature review section of this work. The third objective takes this
action research project a step further by exploring the different stages involved in
preparing the course material followed by the two rounds of classroom teaching, the
lessons learnt in the first round, and the collection of research data obtained from the
recordings of the experiment from both rounds and the informal journals of the
participants. A comparison of the theory (literature review) and the practical (this
action research project) would better inform the present researcher to be in a better
stead to contribute valuable knowledge with respect to the teaching of English
intonation.
The present section on research methods would give details of the research strategy
that was adopted to address the above-mentioned issues together with ways in which
the research data for analysis was collected including the information about the site
and sampling of the participants and the approach for analysis of the findings to be
adopted.
Moreover this research would try to point to the potential issues of limitations on
teaching intonation and the problems associated with the chosen research strategy, the
nature of the participants in this research project and the implementation of its finding
and recommendations in the wider ESL community in general.
Research Strategy
Cohen et al (2007: 78) point out that ‘research design is governed by the notion of
‘fitness for purpose’ and that ‘purposes of the research determine the methodology’.
Objective three of this research sets out that this research project aims to explore ‘the
progress of the participants of this research project (ie teaching English intonation) and
the hurdles in their way of achieving a native-like intonational standing’ which would

be seen through the eyes of the participants from the curriculum design stage to the
actual teaching sessions and the hurdles in their way of achieving a native-like
intonation substantiated and supplemented by the collection and analysis of
experimental data. In order to achieve this goal the first task is to establish the research
method most suitable for the current project.
The primary focus of this research project is to measure the effectiveness and
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