28.3279, Diss: En voz alta: Prosodic Features of “Teacher Talk” in the Spanish Second Language Classroom

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3279. Thu Aug 03 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3279, Diss: En voz alta: Prosodic Features of “Teacher Talk” in the Spanish Second Language Classroom

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Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2017 11:36:06
From: Emily Kuder [ekuder at gmail.com]
Subject: En voz alta: Prosodic Features of “Teacher Talk” in the Spanish Second Language Classroom

 
Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison 
Program: Department of Spanish and Portuguese 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2017 

Author: Emily Elizabeth Kuder

Dissertation Title: En voz alta: Prosodic Features of “Teacher Talk” in the
Spanish Second Language Classroom 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Rajiv Rao
Catherine Stafford

Dissertation Abstract:

Research on “teacher talk” in second language (L2) classrooms has largely
focused on qualitative descriptions of teaching styles, interactions between
teachers and students, and student attitudes. The present study sheds light on
didactic speech prosody by comparing student-directed speech (SDS) of teaching
assistants (TAs) in the L2 classroom to the same individuals' conversational
speech. Similar to modifications employed during accommodative speech styles,
L2 teachers often modify pitch, rhythm and stress patterns when addressing
students, though these tendencies have not been substantiated with
classroom-based inquiry. This study contributes to our knowledge of SDS as it
occurs in the L2 classroom by exploring naturally-occurring classroom speech
data from different TAs of L2 Spanish throughout the course of an academic
semester. Findings from quantitative analyses are garnished with qualitative
evidence to elucidate explanations for differential prosodic adaptations used
during SDS.

Participants were two native and two near-native speaker TAs of third semester
Spanish at a large Midwestern research university. Praat (Boersma & Weenink
2013) software was used to measure duration, intensity, fundamental frequency
mean and range, F0 peak frequency, boundary pitch movement, and rhetorical
stress, and SAS studio was used to determine statistical significance.
Consistent with the findings from previous research, the TAs used greater
acoustic emphasis during didactic speech compared to conversational speech
overall, although the type and degree of prosodic modifications depended upon
a number of factors which were elucidated through background questionnaires
and follow-up interviews. Variation was influenced by the purpose of
utterances, discourse cues, pragmatic messages, emotion, attitude, TA
nativeness in the target language, L2 teacher training and prior teaching
experience, familiarity with the course of instruction and student body, and
time in the semester. Novel findings were attributed to the mixed methods
research design, the naturalistic setting of data elicitation, and the
longitudinal design. This study informs future studies on didactic speech,
while also providing an empirical basis for research on the influence of
prosodic modifications on student learning. Thus, the study stimulates
advancements in teacher education and training.




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