Teaching learners to communicate effectively in the L2: Integrating body language in the students\u2019 syllabus

In communication a great deal of meaning is exchanged through body language, including gaze, posture, hand gestures and body movements. Body language is largely culture-specific, and rests, for its comprehension, on people\u2019s sharing socio-cultural and linguistic norms. In cross-cultural communication, L2 speakers\u2019 use of body language may convey meaning that is not understood or misinterpreted by the interlocutors, affecting the pragmatics of communication. In spite of its importance for cross-cultural communication, body language is neglected in ESL/EFL teaching. This paper argues that the study of body language should be integrated in the syllabus of ESL/EFL teaching and learning. This is done by: 1) reviewing literature showing the tight connection between language, speech and gestures and the problems that might arise in cross-cultural communication when speakers use and interpret body language according to different conventions; 2) reporting the data from two pilot studies showing that L2 learners transfer L1 gestures to the L2 and that these are not understood by native L2 speakers; 3) reporting an experience teaching body language in an ESL/EFL classroom. The paper suggests that in multicultural ESL/EFL classes teaching body language should be aimed primarily at raising the students\u2019 awareness of the differences existing across cultures

The acquisition of English L2 prosody by Italian native speakers: experimental data and pedagogical implications

This paper investigates Yes-No question intonation patterns in English L2, Italian L1, and English L1. The aim is to test the hypothesis that L2 learners may show different acquisition strategies for different dimensions of intonation, and particularly the phonological and phonetic components. The study analyses the nuclear intonation contours of 4 target English words and 4 comparable Italian words consisting of sonorant segments, stressed on the semi-final or final syllable, and occurring in Yes-No questions in sentence-final position (e.g., Will you attend the memorial?, Hai sentito la Melania?). The words were contained in mini-dialogues of question-answer pairs, and read 5 times by 4 Italian speakers (Padova area, North-East Italy) and 3 English female speakers (London area, UK). The results show that: 1) different intonation patterns may be used to realize the same grammatical function; 2) different developmental processes are at work, including transfer of L1 categories and the acquisition of L2 phonological categories. These results suggest that the phonetic dimension of L2 intonation may be more difficult to learn than the phonological one

The relation between pitch and gestures in a story-telling task

Anecdotal evidence suggests that both pitch range and gestures contribute to the perception of speakers\u2019 liveliness in speech. However, the relation between speakers\u2019 pitch range and gestures has received little attention. It is possible that variations in pitch range might be accompanied by variations in gestures, and vice versa. In second language speech, the relation between pitch range and gestures might also be affected by speakers\u2019 difficulty in speaking the L2. In this pilot study we compare global pitch range and gesture rate in the speech of 3 native Italian speakers, telling the same story once in Italian and twice in English as part of an in-class oral presentation task. The hypothesis tested is that contextual factors, such as speakers\u2019 nervousness with the task, cause speakers to use narrow pitch range and limited gestures; a greater ease with the task, due to its repetition, cause speakers to use a wider pitch range and more gestures. This experimental hypothesis is partially confirmed by the results of this study

Detecting Emotional Involvement in Professional News Reporters: An Analysis of Speech and Gestures

This study is aimed to investigate the extent to which reporters\u2019 voice and body behaviour may betray different degrees of emotional involvement when reporting on emergency situations. The hypothesis is that emotional involvement is associated with an increase in body movements and pitch and intensity variation. The object of investigation is a corpus of 21 10-second videos of Italian news reports on flooding taken from Italian nation-wide TV channels. The gestures and body movements of the reporters were first inspected visually. Then, measures of the reporters\u2019 pitch and intensity variations were calculated and related with the reporters' gestures. The effects of the variability in the reporters' voice and gestures were tested with an evaluation test. The results show that the reporters vary greatly in the extent to which they move their hands and body in their reportings. Two gestures seem to characterise reporters\u2019 communication of emergencies: beats and deictics. The reporters\u2019 use of gestures partially parallels the reporters\u2019 variations in pitch and intensity. The evaluation study shows that increased gesturing is associated with greater emotional involvement and less professionalism. The data was used to create an ontology of gestures for the communication of emergenc

Relative Salience of Speech Rhythm and Speech Rate on Perceived Foreign Accent in a Second Language

We investigated the independent contribution of speech rate and speech rhythm to perceived foreign accent. To address this issue we used a resynthesis technique that allows neutralizing segmental and tonal idiosyncrasies between identical sentences produced by French learners of English at different proficiency levels and maintaining the idiosyncrasies pertaining to prosodic timing patterns. We created stimuli that (1) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rhythm while controlling for the differences in speech rate between the utterances; (2) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rate while controlling for the differences in speech rhythm between the utterances; and (3) preserved the idiosyncrasies both in speech rate and speech rhythm. All the stimuli were created in intoned (with imposed intonational contour) and flat (with monotonized, constant F0) conditions. The original and the resynthesized sentences were rated by native speakers of English for degree of foreign accent. We found that both speech rate and speech rhythm influence the degree of perceived foreign accent, but the effect of speech rhythm is larger than that of speech rate. We also found that intonation enhances the perception of fine differences in rhythmic patterns but reduces the perceptual salience of fine differences in speech rate

The role of prosody in pronunciation teaching. A growing appreciation?

This paper provides an overview of current issues in L2 prosody acquisition research and teaching. In particular, it discusses how L2 prosody contributes to the perception and production of foreign accent and may give rise to intelligibility problems. In the last session, it discusses the results of an exploratory study, which was aimed at getting an insight on the differences in English prosody, as produced by native speakers of Southern Standard British English and North-East Italian

Will the New Media Tell a New Story?

This paper discusses how the Internet has changed and is changing news reporting styl

Teaching English Pronunciation: New tools and Methods

This paper discusses the importance of prosody as an aspect of pronunciation which should be focused upon in English Language Teaching, and presents a tool that can be used as an aid for teaching prosody which was used at the University of Padova, Italy, showing great potential for improving in-class and at-home pronunciation practice