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TBLT INSTRUCTIONAL EFFECTS ON TONAL ALIGNMENT AND PITCH RANGE IN L2 SPANISH IMPERATIVES VERSUS DECLARATIVES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

Sean McKinnon
Sean McKinnon*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sean McKinnon, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 355 North Jordan Avenue, GISB 2160, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: samckinn@indiana.edu
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Abstract

The present study investigates the prosody/pragmatics interface in TBLT by extending the traditional morphological focus-on-form to a focus on intonational forms, with Spanish declaratives and imperatives. Twenty-eight intermediate L2 Spanish learners were assigned to one of two conditions that differed in the type of focus-on-form present during the pre- and posttask phases of a focused, task-based intervention: focus on grammar (FOG) or focus on grammar + intonation (FOG + I). All participants were administered an oral discourse completion task in a pre- and a posttest that elicited Spanish imperatives and declaratives to measure gains. Results show that participants, regardless of condition, did not distinguish imperatives from declaratives using intonation in the pretest. However, participants in the FOG + I condition modified their pitch range and pitch accents in the posttest to signal a difference between imperatives and declaratives, though their use was different from the input provided by a native speaker instructor.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Special Issue 2: TBLT and L2 Pronunciation: Do the Benefits of Tasks Extend Beyond Grammar and Lexis? , June 2017 , pp. 287 - 317
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

First and foremost, I would like to thank the guest editors, Professor Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Y. Long, and Megan Solon, for their insightful and constructive feedback on early drafts of this article as well as their encouragement throughout the research process. I also want to thank all those who supported me during the different aspects of data collection, from assistance in the creation of the oral DCT items (Ángel Milla Muñoz), to the instructors of the task-based intervention (Gabriela Quispe for the pilot and Gloria Navajas Sánchez for data presented in this article), as well as the content course instructors who allowed me to recruit from their classes (Professor Patrícia Amaral, Silvina Bongiovanni, Professor Manuel Díaz-Campos, Iraida Galarza, Jordan Garrett, Professor Laura Gurzynksi-Weiss, Maria Hasler-Barker, Erin Lavin, Bret Linford, Avizia Long, Megan Solon, and Sara Zahler). Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Spring 2014 S716 SLA seminar in Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning, Margaret Glide, Daniel Jung, Pilar Prieto, the audience members at the 6th International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching (Leuven, Belgium), and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on early presentations or drafts of this article.

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