Methodology of teaching prosody in Chinese as a second language: an uncharted territory (keynote speech)

0576084 - OÚ 2024 eng A - Abstract
Třísková, Hana
Methodology of teaching prosody in Chinese as a second language: an uncharted territory (keynote speech).
[International Conference on Prosodic Grammar /9./ (ICPG-9). San Francisco, 15.07.2023-16.07.2023]
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Standard Chinese * Mandarin * pronunciation * language teaching * prosody * features of connected speech
OECD category: Specific languages

Prosodic features are by no means a standard part of the syllabus in TCSL. The curriculum commonly includes topics such as the initials, finals, four tones, disyllabic tone combinations, tone sandhi, the neutral tone, and the suffix -r. An explanation of prosodic features is usually missing. As prosody is not recognized as an integral part of CSL, it is no wonder that there is no available methodology for teaching it (what to teach and how to teach it). The Czech Republic is an exception in this respect. There, a focus on teaching prosody is linked to the work of the late Prof. O. Švarný (1920–2011). I was Švarný´s private student for many years, striving to carry his efforts further. I teach a course on Chinese prosody at Charles University Prague to 2nd-semester students. I have designed a curriculum comprising 12 lessons. The main topics are: stress (articulatory/acoustic correlates of stress and non-stress, unstressed function words, stressed question words, word stress, phrasal stress), chunking of speech (prosodic phrases, prosodic words), intonation patterns, information structure, and pragmatics. The course seems to substantially contribute to students´ fluency and naturalness. I have fine-tuned the content and methodology of the course over the years and finally applied it in a textbook (Třísková, 2021 – in Czech). After its translation into English is finished, I hope this textbook can help establishing prosody as an integral part of the TCSL curriculum.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0347122