How Is Comprehension Affected by Intonation?

How is comprehension affected by intonation?

Graduation Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the Department of

English Language and Literature

Notre Dame Seishin University

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirement of the Degree

Bachelor of Arts

By

Natsumi Okamoto

2013

Contents

Abstract1

Chapter 1: The aspects of listening and pronunciation

1.1 Introduction2

1.2 Listening3

1.2.1 Six listening process stages3

1.2.1.1 Hearing3

1.2.1.2 Attending3

1.2.1.3 Understanding4

1.2.1.4 Remembering4

1.2.1.5 Evaluation5

1.2.1.6 Responding5

1.2.2 The difficulties of listening6

1.3 Comprehension7

1.3.1 How to comprehend7

1.3.1.1 Bottom up8

1.3.1.2 Top down 9

1.3.1.3 Schema10

1.4 Pronunciation11

1.4.1 Phonemes12

1.4.2 Accent12

1.4.3 Rhythm13

1.4.4 Intonation13

1.4.4.1 Segmental sounds14

1.4.4.2 Prosodic sounds14

1.5 Listening, pronunciation and comprehension15

1.5.1 Relationship between listening and comprehension15

1.5.2 Relationship between pronunciation and comprehension16

1.5.3 Relationship between intonation and comprehension17

1.6 Research question17

1.7 Summary18

Chapter 2: The experiment

2.1 Introduction19

2.2 The experiment19

2.2.1 Introduction to the experiment19

2.2.2 Method20

1) Subjects20

2) Test design20

3) Procedure21

2.2.3 Results22

1) Comprehension data22

2) Question difficulty23

3) Difference between the 2 groups24 4) The listening level of the subjects by department 24

5) The individual data by question28

2.3 Summary30

Chapter 3: Discussion of the experiment

3.1 Introduction31

3.2 Summary of the results31

3.3 Discussion of the results31

3.3.1 The importance of listening for communication32

3.3.2 The importance of pronunciation

3.3.2.1 The importance of teaching intonation in class

32

3.3.3 The importance for communication33

3.4 Answering the research questions33

3.4.1 How much Japanese learners understand with and without intonation?

34

3.4.2 Is intonation important for Japanese learners?34

3.4.3 What is efficient for listening comprehension?34

3.5 Implication for learning35

3.5.1 For listening35

3.5.2 For intonation37

3.6 Limitation of the experiment39

3.7 Further research40

3.8 Conclusion41

References42

Appendices45

Abstract

Listening is very important skill for language. We always listen someone’s speaking and responding when we communicate. However, we have not so much time for practice listening in our English class at school. We usually practice for reading or writing. Many students miss the chances to practice listening, so they cannot understand fluently from listening. To understand fluently, students should familiar with pronunciation. Among many kinds of pronunciation, intonation can help our understanding smoothly. This thesis ask how does the intonation affected to comprehension, and how we improve our listening comprehension.

In Chapter One, we look at the listening, pronunciation, comprehension and relationship among them. In the comprehension section, we see that native speaker make groups of words to understand; and intonation is important for making groups of words.

In Chapter Two, we find how much subjects can understand with and without intonation in the experiments. There are interesting data between with and without intonation and the subjects who are in English Department or not.

In Chapter Three, we discuss result of the data in detail from the experiment; answer the research questions. According to the experiment, the subjects who learn English longer can understand fluently from listening, and others cannot. So finally, we look at how to improve English teaching at class for Japanese students.

Chapter One: The aspects of pronunciation

1. Introduction

Today, more and more Japanese people learn English as a second language, because now that English is recognized as a kind of universal language so the government decided to have English class at elementary school. The demand for English will become much higher, and we should make our English skill better.

“It is found that among the four language skills, the most frequently used skill in the course of a day in adult life is listening (42%), followed by speaking (32%), reading (15%) and writing (11%)” (Flowerdew, 1994). So, listening is very important skill in our daily life. However, when we study English at school, we may focus on grammar, vocabulary, and reading, because one of our aims for studying English is to pass the test, like entrance examinations. “The teaching of language should be aimed to acquire the skill of communication, but Japanese people are taught English for examination.”(Watanabe, 1994) It is important for us to learn English not only for examinations but also living English.

Many people may think that to acquire the pronunciation is difficult. The pronunciation of English and Japanese are so different in many ways. However, if we acquire good pronunciation, we can communicate in English smoothly. We also understand the speakers feeling and true meaning. So, how does pronunciation affects communication?

1.2 Listening

1.2.1. Six listening process stages

There are six basic stages of the listening process: hearing, attending, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding. (articlesfactory.com website, October, 2012)

1.2.1.1. Hearing

Hearing is to listening to sounds or others speaking. This response is caused by sound waves stimulating the sensory receptors of the ear. Hearing is a physical response and perception of sound waves. For example, we can hear of someone calling us by sound wave.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

1.2.1.2. Attending

In this stage, we pay attention only to a certain amount of the sounds we hear. he brain sifts out a little information to come into focus- these selective perception is known as attention, an important requirement for effective listening; strong stimulation like bright lights, sudden noise are easy to pay attention to. Attention to more commonplace or less striking stimulation requires special effort. For example, when we hear someone’s calling, we pay attention to the speaker.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

In this text, Robert pays attention to what the person A saying.

1.2.1.3. Understanding

This stage is to understand what we heard, where we must analyze the meaning of the stimulation we perceive. The stimulations are not only words but also sounds like hand clapping and sights like blue uniform that have symbolic meanings as well. The meanings attached to these symbols are a function of our past associations and of the context in which the symbols occur; for successful interpersonal communication, the listener must understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

In this text, Robert understand that what the person A saying about.

1.2.1.4. Remembering

This stage is important in the listening process because it means that an individual has not only received and translated a message but has also added it to the mind’s long term memory. However, our remembering and memory are dependent on what kinds of attentions are selected. What is remembered may be quite different from what was originally seen or heard.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

In this text, Robert memorizes the meaning that he is called and who calls him.

1.2.1.5. Evaluation

In this stage, we build our own opinion about what we have heard, paid attention to and understood. We decide what to remember and whether we feel positive, neutral or negative about it.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

In this text, Robert feel positive or negative feeling like “What’s up?” or “Didn’t I do something bad?”

1.2.1.6. Responding

In this stage, we will have to react to what we have heard and paid attention to. In a conversation, we could either respond verbally (with words) or non-verbally (body language, facial expressions). We can check whether we understood the speaker by asking questions or we could give feedback on what we have heard. If you do not respond, the communication usually stops.

e.g.) A: “Robert! Mr. Smith is calling you.”

R: “Ok, I’ll come soon.”

1.2.2 The difficulties of listening

According to Negishi (1992), there are two cases of feeling difficulties of listening; “Text can be understood though difficult to understand in listening”, and “Text cannot be understood and difficult in listening too”.

In the case of “Text can be understood though difficult to understand in listening”, some reasons can be considered. Some phonemes connect and make unknowing sound, or listener cannot remember the meaning momently and keep up with the listening speed. Sometimes, we cannot notice the drop sound like “t”, or assimilation like “going to” become “gonna”.

In the case of “Text cannot be understood and difficult in listening too”, there are some reasons too. Listeners do not know the words, expressions, knowledge of grammar, or background of the text will be affected. This is relationship between comprehension and schema. For example, when we understand the text, the theme which we know already is much easier to understand. On the other hand, the theme which we do not know is hard to understand though the text’s grammar and words are easy.

Other view of listening difficulties, Underwood (1989) gave three views about it. (Kaneko, Hasegawa, 2007)

1. Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak.

Speaking by native speaker is so fast that we could not catch up with the speed.

1. Not being able to get things repeated.

In listening test, we cannot listen again. So, if a listener could not catch a part, he might not be able to understand all.

1. The listener’s limited vocabulary.

If we have less vocabulary, we could not understand what the speaker saying though we could catch the sounds.

As we see these things, it seems that the best text for listening is “listener mostly can understand by reading the text, and listener can guess by the prerequisite knowledge”. Moreover, the listener should store vocabularies and practice for listening.

1.3 Comprehension

1.3.1 How to comprehend?

In the mechanism of reading and listening, the most efficient way is interaction. There are two kind of explanation about interaction. (Grabe, 1991) One of them is interaction of bottom up and top down, which is the way of working some skills at the same time. The other is interaction of language process and recognition process, which is insisted as interaction of schema and context. (Kadota, 2007) We always think with bottom up, top down, schema and context. The bottom up system use context and the top down system use schema. For example, when we read or listen to some contexts, we use bottom up system to understand, and then, use top down system and schema to understand or expect with other information in our mind. We look at the system of bottom up, top down, and schema more deeply.

1.3.1.1. Bottom up

Bottom up system is the way of processing which we recognize some letters or sounds first, and then understand the meaning. This system leads us understanding only with the letters and sounds we get, but with working about supposition and inspection in one’s mind.

Activities that formally introduce new vocabulary and word-study exercises will contribute a great deal to student’s repertoires of familiar words. However, knowledge of vocabulary is not enough to make students good listeners; they must also be able to use syntax to help them recognize the relationships among the words they have heard and to retain utterances in memory long enough to understand them. Formal exercises focusing on the recognition of syntactic structures are essential to the development of this skill. Thus, knowledge of the vocabulary is not enough to understand the meaning, and pronunciation help us to find syntactic structures. (Wang, 2004)

1.3.1.2. Top down

Top down system is way of processing which we build up a hypothesis about the context choosing information and inspect the hypothesis using schema and script as a background knowledge. In this way, we cannot catch the writer’s real intention to understand only the meaning of words.

The efficient way of comprehension is not to understand all of the information, but to choose only a few essential key of understanding, expect, and inspect the hypothesis with reading. (Goodman, 1970)

There are three main benefits if students get some information before they listen to. First, an introduction helps students to recall any information that they may already know about the topic, either from personal experience or other reading or listening. If the students keep this knowledge in mind as they listen, they increase their opportunities to make sense of the information they find in the listening material. Second, getting the students to start to think about the topic should increase their interest in the topic and thereby motivate them to listen to the material. Third, if the introduction activity is conducted in the target language, it will also review or introduce the relevant vocabulary for the topic. Pictures, photographs and brainstorming in this stage can also help to make listening comprehension in the main listening stage much easier for the students. (Wang, 2004) These are the same as when we solve the problem in Japanese. It is easier for us to solve if there is an introduction.

1.3.1.3. Schema

Schema processing is a expecting the meaning of a context using relevant information database, which is the information listener have in their mind such as common sense or knowledge about specific area. (Kadota, 2007) Schema is a kind of saving information in our mind. We hear some words like “Snow”, “December”, “Present”, “Santa Clause”, and we can expect “Christmas”.

Here are some determinations of schema mentioned by Rumelhart & Ortony (1977).

1. Schema is made from some variable. For example, think the notion of “buy”. It contains the variable of “seller”, “buyer”, “goods”, and “money”.

2. One schema consist a hierarchy, because a schema can be connected with other schemas. For example, the schema for “face” contains subschemas like “eye”, “nose”, “mouth” and “ear”; and these subschemas contain lower subschemas. For example, a schema “eye” contains subschema of “eye brow”, or “eyelash”.

3. Schema can express various levels of abstract general terms. For example, the schemas, which contain name of things or properties as variables like verb schema “buy” or “face schema”, or another schema, which express continuity of action like “restaurant schema”, reflect the different levels of abstraction.

4. Schema does not have any strict determination, but is considered to express normal and typical knowledge like encyclopedia, and to be flexibility. Besides, schema can be different depending on a reader’s cultural background. When we can understand the content, it is familiar with his cultural background smoothly. However, we may misunderstanding the content, which is unfamiliar, because we have own cultural schema which deferent from the schema of content.

When we understand the context, we need many background knowledge, which is like grammar knowledge, social knowledge, cultural knowledge, specific knowledge and so on. Carrell & Eisterhold insisted that learner’s input is promoted by mapping with new information and schema that the learner already has. (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983, 1984). Carrell et al studied which top down process and bottom up process is more efficient to comprehension, but the interaction is much more efficient. (Carrell et al, 1988)

1.4 Pronunciation

There are several aspects of pronunciation. In order to study how something works it is often useful to break it down into its constituent parts. The following diagram shows a breakdown of the main features of pronunciation. In the next section we will look at each aspect in detail.

Teaching pronunciation consists of two fields

1.4.1 Phonemes

The phoneme any one of the set of smallest units of speech in a language that distinguish one word from another. (Oxford English Dictionary) As we know, Japanese has 5 vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/) and 14 consonants (/k/, /s/, /t/, /h//ɡ/, /z/, /d/, /b//p//n/, /m/, /r//j/, /w/). We make sounds with only vowels or one consonants ＋one vowel. On the contrary in English, it has 21vowels and 24 consonants. English sounds are made up not only of vowel ＋consonant, but also consonant ＋consonants can be made. For example, rhythm is made by only consonants; but when Japanese people say this word as Japanese English, it becomes ri-zu-mu. This is one of the reasons that “Japanese English” is difficult for native speaker.

1.4.2. Accent

Accent is one way of emphasizing the stress in words. It is the term we use to describe the point in a word or phrase where pitch changes, vowels lengthen, and volume increases. When we say qualify, banana, and understand, we try to say them as QUAlify, baNAna, and underSTAND. All of them have three identifiable syllables, and one of the syllables in each word will sound louder than the others. (Gerald, 2000)

The place of accent can help tells us the parts of speech like noun or verb and meaning. The noun has a stress on the first syllable and the verb has a stress on the second syllable. For the sake of simple presentation we will put accents over the normal written form. Thus we write i’nsult (noun) and insu’lt (verb). People tend to think of stress as being a matter of loudness, but higher pitch plays a part too in the realization of stress at least in most varieties of English. (Blake, 2008)

1.4.3. Rhythm

Language has a rhythm. Rhythm is a pattern which we feel some prominent element (stress in English, mora in Japanese, syllable in Spanish) at regular intervals. In English, syllables appearing which have stress at regular interval makes rhythm. (Nishihara, Matsubara, Nanjyo, Toyoshima, Takahashi, 2005)

1.4.4. Intonation

“By intonation we mean the rise and fall of the pitch the voice when we speak” (Armstrong & Ward, 1931) This is said to be the general determinant of intonation. According to Watanabe, Kenyon (1950), Kurath (1964), Catford (1988) had almost the same explanation.

“The term intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we are speaking. It is a fundamental part of the way we express our own thoughts and it enables us to understand those of others. It is an aspect of language that we are very sensitive to, but mostly at an unconscious level. We perceive intonation, understand it and use it without having to examine the intricacies of everything we say or hear.” (Gerald, 2000) We can see that intonation is important for understanding the expression of others and thoughts. To see intonation, there are 2 kinds of sound in language, segmental sounds and prosodic sounds.

1.4.4.1. Segmental sounds

Segmental sounds are the smallest unit of sound like vowels and consonants. For example, there are three segments in cat, /k/, /æ/, /t/. It is difficult for Japanese learner in segmental sounds to distinguish consonants like /r/ and /l/, /b/ and /v/.

1.4.4.2. Prosodic sounds

Prosodic sounds are like stress, pitch, duration, and intonation. People do not always understand what others saying by words, but by passages or dialogue. “Generally, the changes of prosodic sounds affect comprehension of meaning much more than segmental sounds.”(Kadota, 2007)