the roles of phonological knowledge in l2 lower achievers

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THE JOURNAL OF ASIA TEFL Vol.10, No. 2, pp. 1-34, Summer 2013

The Roles of Phonological Knowledge in L2

Lower Achievers’ Reading Development

Chen, Hsueh Chu

The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong

This study investigates the role of phonological knowledge in the reading

development of learners and clarifies the relationships among phonological

awareness (PA), prosodic skills (PS) and reading comprehension (RC).

Sixteen English as a second language (ESL) lower achievers from a Hong

Kong secondary school participated in the study. Three types of related

measures (PA, PS and RC) were conducted. A passage was read aloud and

an acoustic analysis was conducted. The results showed that the correct

rate of RC was 38.16 %. Among the PA subtasks, rhyme detection

was the easiest task, followed by alliteration detection, syllable

segmentation, and non-word reading. In the PS subtasks, phrasal

rhythm was the easiest task, followed by intonation sensitivity, and

word stress tasks. The tasks that correlated highest with RC were non-word

reading and word stress tasks, suggesting that these two indicators played a

major role in RC. Amongst all of the tasks, rhythm detection and syllable

segmentation, and phrasal rhythm and word stress were significantly and

positively correlated. Detailed information about the participants’ responses

and strategies on non-word reading, word stress, and intonation sensitivity

tasks was described. Acoustic analyses of speed, pause and intonation were

made, measured and calculated.

Keywords: phonological processing, prosodic sensitivity, reading, reading

aloud, production and perception

The Roles of Phonological Knowledge in L2 Lower Achievers’ Reading Development

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INTRODUCTION

Research has shown evidence that phonological knowledge plays a crucial role

in language learners’ reading development (Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Kamil,

Mosenthal, Pearson, & Barr, 2000). Phonological awareness, according to Walton

and Walton (2002), is “conscious access to the component sounds of speech within

words and the ability to manipulate sounds” (pp. 79-80). It is also an important

predictor of language learners’ reading achievement (Stanovich, 2000). Stanovich

stressed that poor readers tend to have poor phonological awareness and are less

efficient in phonological processing. Although there is a growing body of research

investigating the importance of phonological awareness in reading, most

investigations into phonological awareness are limited by their dependence on

rhyming and phoneme identity.

In recent years, contributions have been made to exploring the role prosody (the

supra-segmental information) plays in language learners’ reading processes (Ashby,

2006; Whalley & Hansen, 2006; Wood, 2006). Studies have shown the predictive

ability of prosodic skills on reading ability. Wood and Terrell (1998) noted that

poor readers are less aware of rhythm, while Whalley and Hansen (2006) found that

after controlling for phonological awareness and general rhythmic sensitivity,

children with greater prosodic skills are superior in word reading accuracy and

reading comprehension. In her research, Ashby (2006) pointed out that skilled

readers process prosodic information during silent reading, and further concluded

that skilled readers not only activate a series of phonological segments, but also

appear to activate a prosodic structure.

Several studies have recently investigated the relationship between prosodic

sensitivity and word reading from a phonological awareness perspective. Wood

(2006) developed the ‘stress mispronunciations task’ to assess children’s sensitivity

to stress in spoken language for beginning readers. To succeed at this task, children

had to recover the correct stress in order to match the stored lexical code and

identify the correct item. Performance on this task was found to be significantly

related to reading development. Holliman, Wood and Sheehy (2008) adopted the

stress mispronunciations task from Wood (2006) and found that prosodic sensitivity

The Journal of Asia TEFL

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was able to predict unique variance in word reading after controlling for age,

vocabulary and phonological awareness. In Holliman, Wood, and Sheehy’s (2012)

cross-sectional study, they further explored the relationship between prosodic

sensitivity and phonological awareness and investigate whether a group of poor

readers display significant suprasegmental phonological deficits in comparison to

chronological age-matched controls and younger, reading age-matched controls.

The results showed that poor readers were outperformed by their chronological

age-matched counterparts on all measures of prosodic sensitivity. Significant

relationships were also found between measures of prosodic sensitivity and

phonological awareness. These findings emphasize the importance of both

segmental and suprasegmental phonological skills in children’s reading

development.

Previous studies have also provided evidence for the positive relationship

between prosody and reading and pre-reading ability. Beginner readers tend to rely

more on bottom-up skills to decode words from the texts and fail to integrate

appropriate top-down reading skills in the reading process. In the reading aloud

process, developing readers were characterised as having more unexpected pauses,

hesitations and mispronunciation. Wood and Terrell (1998), utilizing a rhythmic

task to assess poor readers’ sensitivity to rhythm in speech, found that poor readers

do experience a developmental delay in rhythmic awareness (p. 397). Similar

evidence can also be shown in the beat detection task adopted by Goswami et al.

(2002). In the study, Goswami et al. also found that young readers who started to

read before their school years outperformed a control group at the task.

Reading fluency has attracted attention in recent years. Reading fluency is defined

by Hudson, Lane, and Pullen (2005) to include three key elements: accurate reading

of the texts, appropriate reading rate and correct prosody (expression). That is,

readers have to show their decoding ability to read the texts with an adequate reading

rate. Also, fluency is when readers can fulfil the reading task by making the correct

links with prosodic features in the reading process. The reason for emphasising

reading fluency is that there is a strong correlation between a reader’s fluency and

their reading comprehension (Katzir et al., 2006). Therefore, we can conclude that to


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be a fluent reader, phonological awareness and reading prosody are two crucial

elements not to be underestimated.

While the importance of phonological awareness and prosody to reading ability is

well established in the development of first language acquisition, the potential role of

these aspects in reading development of second language adult learners has been less

explored. Studies have shown that second language learners of English are

inevitably influenced by their first language (L1). English, a stress-timed language

differs from Chinese, a syllable-timed language. Several studies have shown that

L1 transfer is prominent, especially in the early stages of L2 acquisition (for

example, Major, 2001). Therefore, exploring the relationship among ESL adult

lower achievers’ prosodic skills, phonological awareness and reading ability can

contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of foreign language segmental

and supra-segmental patterns. An understanding of the phonological and prosodic

factors that weigh most heavily on reading development can be used to establish a

hierarchy of priorities for teaching pronunciation to second or foreign language

learners.

This study investigates the role of phonological awareness and prosodic skills in

reading development. It also seeks to clarify the relationships among them. More

specifically, the purposes of this study are:

(a) to probe Hong Kong ESL low achievers’ performances on measures of

phonological awareness;

(b) to investigate Hong Kong ESL low achievers’ performances on measures of

prosodic skills at the word-, phrase- and sentence-level;

(c) to explore the role of phonological knowledge in L2 reading development.

METHOD

Participants

Sixteen ESL lower achievers were paid to participate in the study, which was

done with the intention to bring in more seriousness and motivation in participation.


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They were from Form Five of a Hong Kong secondary school with a Banding 3 (the

lowest banding in the Hong Kong secondary school banding system). Their ages

ranged from 15 to 17 years old. They were requested to undertake three types of

related measures, namely phonological awareness (tasks included rhyme detection,

alliteration detection, oral syllable segmentation, and non-word reading), prosodic

sensitivity (tasks included word stress, phrasal rhythm and sentence-level intonation)

and reading comprehension (five passages with multiple-choice comprehension

questions). Following that, they were asked to read a passage extraction from Harry

Potter and the Chamber of Secrets aloud and this was recorded.

2. Design of Tasks

The tasks in the present study were divided into three parts: phonological

awareness, prosodic sensitivity and reading comprehension tasks.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness (PA) was assessed by rhyme detection, alliteration

detection, syllable segmentation and non-word reading (Bryant et al., 1990; Wood,

2006). In the first three tasks, all the clues were presented aurally and visually,

while for the final task, the participants were asked to read a non-word list. The

details and purposes of each task of the PA test are described below.

Rhyme and Alliteration Detection

A modified version of the phonological “odd one out” task was employed in this

study (Bryant et al., 1990). Within each of the rhyme and alliteration tasks, one

practice trial and then 10 experimental trials are contained. In order to avoid a ceiling

effect, the difficulty level is controlled (Bowey, Cain, & Ryan, 1992). Two words

are rhymed or alliterated, while the third is not (e.g., can, man, lam; fun, find, pink,

respectively). The words were also read aloud twice by a native English speaker to


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the participants by utilizing the broadcasting system. The participants were asked to

cross the odd one out after listening.

Syllable Segmentation

The syllable segmentation task was designed to assess the participants’ awareness

of syllable structure. The participants were asked to indicate the number of syllables

of 15 words after listening. The words were arranged with increasing items of

difficulty, from monosyllabic words to six-syllable words.

Non-Word Reading

The items were designed by referencing the Phonological Assessment Battery

(Frederickson, Frith, & Reason, 1997). The participants were asked to read as many

non-words as possible from a list of non-words of increasing difficulty in 60 seconds.

The purpose of this task was to assess the decoding ability of the participants.

Prosodic Sensitivity

Prosodic skills (PS) comprise three tasks, namely word-level, phrasal-level and

sentence-level sensitivity tasks. The participants were asked to listen to phrases

and/or sentences being read.

Word-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Word Stress)

The task was designed to detect participants’ sensitivity to word stress.

Experimental items included 24 polysyllabic words with six stress patterns (Oo, oO,

Ooo, oOo, Oooo, and ooOo). Lower case o's represent unstressed syllables, while

capital O's represent stressed syllables. For example: party (Oo). Each word was

read once only by a native speaker. After listening, participants were asked to

categorise the 24 words into correct columns according to the six stress patterns.


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Phrasal-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Rhythm)

This task was designed to detect participants’ prosodic sensitivity in phrasal-level

stress. The DEEdee task proposed by Whalley and Hansen (2006, originally from

Kitzen, 2001) is widely used to assess prosodic sensitivity at the phrasal-level. In the

present study, DEEdee symbols were replaced by the graphical patterns “O” and

“o”, which is much more obvious for participants to recognise. For example, the

phrase Close the windows would be denoted as “OoO” in terms of rhythm

information. Also, the syllable numbers and duration are not changed. The sign of

capital “O” refers to the stress pattern of the syllable, while the lower case “o” refers

to the unstressed syllable. There are 18 experimental items in total for this task. In

the application phase, the participants heard each phrase once, and then they had to

put the phrases into the right pattern column. A total of 18 trials were used. For

example, It’s cold and wet (“oOoO”).

Sentence-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Intonation)

The sentence-level prosodic sensitivity was assessed by means of the tasks

constructed by Wells, Peppe, and Goulandris (2004), which is an elaboration of

Wells and Peppe’s (2003) task. The task was constructed to test the participants’

ability to distinguish between compound nouns and noun phrases, affective prosodic

cues, interactive cues and prominent cues. A total of 10 items across the four parts

are included in the sentence-level prosodic sensitivity task. The prominent prosody

sensitivity task was manipulated to test the salient features carried by prosodic cues

when information is conveyed. The participants heard a recorded stimulus and had

to identify the prominent noun emphasised by the prosodic cues. An example is

presented below:

(Background voice)

a. I want a hamburger and TEA.

(Written on the answer sheet.)

What do you think “a” is not receiving?


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Hamburger

Tea

Textual-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Reading Aloud)

All of the participants were asked to individually read aloud a revised passage

excerpted from the well-known English novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of

Secrets. This passage was chosen because it has several obvious advantages. First,

the vocabulary, grammar and sound segments contained in the passage were revised

into a simplified version, thereby fitting the participants’ language proficiency.

Second, the sentences in the story were carefully designed to focus on a particular

theme. It avoids sequences that are hard to syllabify or segment. The story is so

well-known that it is expected that the learners’ familiarity with the story will reduce

their anxiety while reading. Third, the story contains different types of sentences in

order to eliminate or counterbalance the effects of different sentence types on

prosody patterns and provide abundant instances of the various types of intonation,

pausing and speed produced by the learners.

Each participant was recorded reading the story in a quiet room on a notebook

computer with the Praat software (http://www.praat.org).. The participants were told

to reflect on the contextual clues and affective status of the characters. They were

also advised to read aloud with enthusiasm and to the best of their ability. Each

participant was asked to read the story and was allowed to request help and practise

words he/she was not familiar with before the recording began. An acoustic analysis,

designed to measure and compare three variables selected from the reading aloud

task, was conducted. These variables were: pause, speed and intonation. A native

speaker of British English, who has been teaching English for nine years in a Hong

Kong secondary school, recorded the task stimuli and the passage extraction. The

latter was taken as the norm, so as to make acoustic comparison with the utterances

produced by the students. Both sets of phonological and prosodic tasks are listed in

appendix I.


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Reading Comprehension

A reading comprehension task was administered to measure students’ reading

comprehension ability. Participants were asked to do a reading task with five

passages, among which, two were long passages and three were relatively short

passages. The duration of the task was limited to 50 minutes. The chosen articles

were adapted from Wang (2006). They were designed for first year senior high

school students in Taiwan with a vocabulary level of 4,000 words. The genres of the

texts are all expository. To ensure an appropriate match between a reader’s ability

and the difficulty of the testing materials, the researcher used Fry’s readability

formula to grade the readability of the reading texts. As a result, the readability of the

texts is roughly between grades six and seven. The level of proficiency of texts with

a readability of seven was a little higher than the expected participants’ current level

of English.

RESULTS

In this section, the results of the overall performance of the three measures are

presented first. The three tasks of non-word reading, word-level stress, and sentential

intonation with lower correct rates are then selected to report in detail. Finally, an

acoustic analysis of the reading aloud task specifically investigating the pause,

speech rate, and intonation is discussed.

Overall Performance

Table 1 shows the average correct rates of the three measures, phonological

awareness (PA=74.12%), prosodic sensitivity (PS=59.6%) and reading comprehension

(RC=38.16%). From the results of reading comprehension, it is evident that they are a

group of lower achievers in Hong Kong secondary school; only one third of questions

were successfully comprehended. In general, this group of participants performed better

in phonological awareness tasks than prosodic sensitivity ones.


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Among the phonological awareness tasks, rhyme detection (97.5%) was the

easiest task, followed by alliteration detection (90.63%), oral syllable segmentation

(79.17%), and non-word reading (29.12%). There seemed to be a gap between

perception and production among these learners. Despite having perceived onset,

rhyme and syllable counting, and possession well, they were not able to produce

non-words properly.

Among the prosodic sensitivity tasks, phrasal rhythm (57.99%) was the easiest

task, followed by sentence-level intonation (55.00%), and word stress (53.39%).

This group of lower achievers had fair performance among the four tasks.

Differences between production and perception were not evident, but they

performed slightly better on the reading aloud production task than the perception

tasks.

TABLE 1

Overall Performance among Phonological Awareness, Prosodic Sensitivity

and Reading Comprehension Measures

Measures Types of tasks Tasks Average

correct rates

Average

phonological

awareness

(PA)

Perception rhyme detection 97.50% 74.12%

alliteration detection 90.63%

syllable segmentation 79.17%

Production non-word reading 29.12%

prosodic

skills

(PS)

Perception word stress 53.39% 59.60%

phrasal rhythm 57.99%

sentential intonation 55.00%

Production reading aloud 72%

reading reading comprehension 38.16% 38.16%

Table 2 shows the correlations between all the tasks. The tasks that correlate

highest with reading comprehension are non-word reading (r = 0.63) and word

stress sensitivity (r = 0.54) tasks and thus they are the two best indicators for the

success of reading comprehension. Rhyme detection, alliteration detection and oral

syllable segmentation were considered too easy for these learners and failed to play

key roles in reading comprehension. Amongst all of the tasks, rhythm and syllables


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(r = 0.69), and rhythm and stress (r = 0.78) were significantly and positively

correlated. Reading aloud was significantly and positively correlated with word

stress (r = 0.72), rhythm (r = 0.62), syllable segmentation (r = 0.59) and intonation

(r = 0.41).

TABLE 2

Correlations of PA, PS and RC Measures

Rhyme Alliter-

ation

Syllables Non-

word

Word

stress

Rhythm Inton-

ation

Reading

aloud

Reading

Comp.

-0.17 -0.20 0.04 0.63** 0.54* 0.23 0.20 0.27

Rhyme 0.10 -0.07 0.33 -0.10 -0.15 0.24 0.04

Alliteration 0.27 -0.04 0.35 0.39 0.02 0.21

Syllables -0.15 0.43* 0.69** -0.11 0.59*

Non-word 0.22 0.05 -0.17 0.24

Stress 0.78** 0.25 0.72**

Rhythm 0.34 0.62**

Intonation 0.41*

* p < .05, ** p < .01

Among all the phonological tasks, the non-word reading, word-level prosodic

sensitivity task (word stress), phrasal-level prosodic sensitivity task (rhythm), and

sentential-level prosodic sensitivity task (intonation) were scored less than 60% of

correct rate. The error patterns were detailed as follows:

Non-word Reading Task

The non-word reading task examined the participants’ knowledge of English

grapheme-phoneme correspondences and ability to blend phonemes through having

them read aloud. Better performance of vowel reading was shown in Table 3, for

example, the short vowel /e/ in cresh (56% correct rate) and jelmbs (44%), /Q/ in

falp (44%), /I/ in phils (63%). These showed that the participants had basic phonics

knowledge about short vowels. However, they were weak in most long vowels or


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diphthongs, such as /u:/ in yoofs (6%), /Î:/ in smurphs (19%), /aI/ in brive (13%);

and /«U/ in coashed (19%).

TABLE 3

Performance of Non-Words by Hong Kong Students.

Nonword Expected

vowels

Examples of

mispronounced vowels

Correct rates

for vowels

1. dulp /ʌ/ dəpsd, əʊp, deɪps, drɪps 31%

2. cresh /e/ kweɪʃ, krʌs, træs, krɪʃ 56%

3. croill /ɔɪ/ kɔ:, kɔ:lɪ, kru:, kəʊrəɪ 31%

4. brive /aɪ/ brɪv, blɑ:f, drʌf, brʊf 13%

5. ketts /e/ tɪts, keɪt, ki:s 6%

6. yoofs /u:/ jɑ:f, jəʊs, jɒfs 6%

7. thoiled /ɔɪ/ θɒd, fɔ:t, fləʊd, θrɒld 25%

8. coashed /əʊ/ kɒst, kɔɪst, kreʃd, krɔsd 19%

9. triffth /ɪ/ tʃwʌvɪ, tɑ:vɪd, tʃɑɪsfʌns 25%

10. jelmbs /e/ ʤɑ:v, ʤɜ:nɪfə, ʤə:məs 44%

11. phils /ɪ/ fɑ:v. fəʊləʊs, fɔ:nləs 63%

12. fleaved /i:/ fɑ:nd, frɒfd, faɪvi:, flæd 25%

13. smurphs /ɜ:/ sʌmprɪs, smæʃs, ʃnʌpsfɪ, sɜ:fskænsɪs 19%

14. falp /æ/ feɪp, frʌlp, frʌlp 44%

15. chude /u:/ tʃʌd, tʃweɪd, tʃ i:t, kəʊtʃd 31%

Average 29%

Word-level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (word stress)

The word-level prosodic sensitivity task was designed to detect participants’

sensitivity to word stress. The average correct rate of stress assignment was around

50%, which indicated that Hong Kong students were fairly familiar with the

concept of word stress. Two of the most problematic words were today (6.25%

correct rate) and afternoon (25%), assigning the stress on the first syllable. In

another two examples, welcome (31.25%) and tomorrow (31.25%), most of the

participants assigned the stress to oO and ooO, which aligned with our general

impression on Hong Kong students’ pronunciation habit of stressing the word on


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the final syllable. Table 4 shows the summary of the performance and examples of

mispronounced stress patterns.

TABLE 4

Report of Word-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Stress) of Hong Kong

Students.

Items Expected word

stress patterns

Examples of

mispronounced stress

Correct rates

for word stress

Today oO Oo 6.25%

Afternoon ooO oOo, Ooo, Oo 25.00%

Welcome Oo oO 31.25%

Tomorrow oOo ooO 31.25%

Company Ooo ooO, oOo 31.25%

Stupid Oo oOo, oO, ooO 37.50%

Businessman Ooo ooOo, Oooo 43.75%

Rapturously Oooo oOo, Ooo, ooOo 43.75%

Excellent Ooo oOo, ooO, ooOo 43.75%

Journalist Ooo oOo, ooOo, ooO, Oooo 50.00%

Economics ooOo Oooo, Ooo 50.00%

Introduce ooO Ooo, oOo, Oooo 56.25%

Party Oo oO, ooOo 56.25%

Tonelessly Ooo oOo, Oooo, oO 56.25%

Bedroom Oo Ooo, ooO, oO 56.25%

Musician oOo ooO, Ooo, Oooo, ooOo 62.50%

Exactly oOo ooO, Ooo, Oooo 62.50%

Position oOo ooO, oO, Ooo 68.75%

Pretend oO Oo, Ooo, oOo 68.75%

o'clock oO Oo, ooO, Ooo 68.75%

Electrician ooOo Oooo, oOo 75.00%

Holiday Ooo oOo 81.25%

Fifteen oO Oo 81.25%

Dinner Oo oO 93.75%

Average 53.39%


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Phrasal-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Rhythm)

The phrasal-level prosodic sensitivity task was designed to detect participants’

sensitivity to rhythm. The average correct rate of stress assignment was slightly

higher than that of word stress, which indicated that Hong Kong students were also

moderately familiar with the concept of phrasal or short sentential stress.

Two of the most problematic items were phrasal verbs, carry on and hurry up

(12.5% correct rate). The stress pattern (OoO) requires the stresses to be assigned

on the first syllable of carry and hurry, as well as the particles, on and up,

respectively. Most of the participants were not aware of the unstressed syllables,

and considered one syllable bears one stress, which reflects the negative transfer of

their first language: Chinese language is said to be syllable-timed. There is no

strong pattern of stress in Chinese; syllables maintain their length, and vowels

maintain their quality. This can also explain why they performed best the two items:

Take care! and Don’t move! (OO) Both cases need the stresses on each

mono-syllabic word.

In another two problematic examples, Where’s the car? and what’s the time (37.

5%), the expected rhythm pattern is OoO. The participants did not assign the stress

to Wh-H question words, where and what. Although they might have possessed

general rules of phrasal/sentential stress: content words tend to be stressed, while

function words tend not to be stressed, more practice is needed to consolidate their

knowledge. Table 5 shows the summary of the expected words stress patterns and

correct rates for the word stress.


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TABLE 5

Report of Phrasal-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Rhythm) of Hong Kong

Students

Items Expected

word stress

patterns

Correct

rates for

word stress

Items Expected

word stress

patterns

Correct

rates for

word

stress

Carry on! OoO 12.50% The bus was late oOoO 68.75%

Hurry up! OoO 12.50% Does he drive? ooO 75.00%

The water’s

cold.

oOoO

18.75% Come and look.OoO

75.00%

Close the

windows. OoOo

25.00%

What did she

say?

OoOo

81.25%

Where’s the

car?

OoO

37.50% It’s cold and wet.

oOoO

81.25%

What’s the

time?

OoO

37.50% Keep calm!

OO

81.25%

Phone and tell

me.

OoOo

43.75% Is it fun?

ooO

87.50%

Were you cold? ooO 56.25% Take care! OO 87.50%

What do you

want?

OooO

68.75% Don’t move! OO

93.75%

Average 57.99 %

Sentential-level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (Intonation)

This task was constructed to test the participants’ ability to distinguish between

compound nouns and noun phrases, affective prosodic cues, interactive cues and

prominent cues. Table 6 shows that among these ten items, participants performed

the worst in compound nouns in Question 2, noun phrases in Question 3 and

affective prosodic cues in Question 6, as shown below.


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TABLE 6

Performance of Sentential-Level Prosodic Sensitivity Task.

Question Correct Rate Examples of misperceived or misinterpreted intonation

1 75% Q2. (Background voice) a. Anna-Belle, Sally, and I are going to a movie tomorrow. (Written on the answer sheet.) How many people are going to a movie tomorrow? Two Three√ Four

2 31%

3 19%

4 44% Q3. (Background voice) a. I want a hamburger and TEA. (Written on the answer sheet.) What do you think “a” is not receiving? Hamburger Tea √

5 44%

6 31%

7 81% Q6. (Background voice) a. I took a vacation on a cruise ship for a month. b. THAT’s the life. (Written on the answer sheet.) What does “b” feel about “a’s” vacation? Appreciation. (I like your vacation.) √ Dislike. (I don’t like it.) Sympathy. (I agree with you.)

8 63%

9 69%

10 75%

Participants made more inappropriate interpretations on compound nouns in

Question 2 (31%), noun phrases in Question 3 (19%) and affective prosodic cues in

Question 6 (31%). They were not sensitive to the pause boundaries between the

words. The intonation showing the speaker’s attitude (e.g., appreciation, dislike, or

sympathy) was also perceived less.

In the following section, an acoustic analysis was conducted to illustrate the

participants’ production of speed, pause and intonation in the reading aloud task.

Acoustic Analysis (Reading Aloud)

For the reading aloud assessment criteria, we looked at whether the speakers were

confident about the pronunciation of words, sentence stress and intonation patterns

and if their reading of the text was clear and communication of meaning was

effective. We also looked at whether the speed of delivery and pausing were


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appropriate, thereby facilitating audience attention and understanding. The general

impression scores were then given.

Acoustic measurements were also conducted to compare and calculate the speed,

pausing and intonation in more detail. The performance of a total of 16 participants

was recorded and compared with that of a native speaker of English. Take for

example the sentence in the passage: “I’ll be in my bedroom, making no noise and

pretending I’m not there,” said Harry tonelessly. Table 7 shows that the speed of

the 16 ESL participants (12.608s) was, on average, twice as fast as that of the NS

(6.030s). The pause locations and durations for the NS were: “I’ll be in my

bedroom (0.448s), making no noise (0.410s) and pretending I’m not there

(0.517s),” said Harry tonelessly. On the other hand, those of the 16 participants, on

average, were: “I’ll be in my bedroom (0.440s), making no noise (0.266s) and

pretending I’m not there (0.713s),” said Harry tonelessly. If the individual speech

rates are taken into account, it was found that HK learners (three pauses on average,

0.037s, 0.023s, and 0.056s, respectively) intended to pause for half the time of the

native English speaker (three pauses on average, 0.074s, 0.068s, and 0.086s,

respectively). Again, we found the Hong Kong participants were not very aware of

the appropriate use of pauses, and thus this affected the formation of the natural

rhythm that native speakers had between the phrasal boundaries.

The intonation contour of NS is “I’ll be in my bedroom (→↘), making no noise

(→→) and pretending I’m not there, (→↘)” said Harry tonelessly (→→). Two

level tones were used to express Harry’s feeling about his indifference to the party

to be held by his uncle and aunt. However, nine out of these 16 participants used

only one level tone, and four did not even use any level tone to express the

disinterest.


18

TABLE 7

Comparison Between the NS and 16 Hong Kong Participants of:

“I’ll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I’m not there,” said

Harry tonelessly.

Speed

(sec)

Pause (sec) Pause/Speed Intonation Level

Tones P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3

S1 16.019 0.641 0.086 0.620 0.040 0.005 0.039 →(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S2 16.130 0.515 0.616 0.579 0.032 0.038 0.036 →↘(bedroom),

→↗(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

0

S3 24.070 0.396 0.182 1.662 0.016 0.007 0.069 →↗(bedroom),

→↗(noise),

→↘(there),

→↗(tonelessly)

1

S4 16.310 0.514 0.286 1.317 0.031 0.018 0.080 →→(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

2

S5 18.458 0.258 0.100 0.939 0.014 0.005 0.050 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S6 9.077 0.060 0.120 0.540 0.007 0.013 0.059 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S7 10.116 0.194 0.080 0.980 0.019 0.008 0.097 →↘(bedroom),

→↘(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

0

S8 11.781 0.520 0.050 0.532 0.044 0.004 0.045 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

2

S9 13.948 0.651 0.543 0.473 0.047 0.039 0.034 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

1


19

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

S10 8.628 0.561 0.049 0.509 0.065 0.006 0.059 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S11 8.943 0.296 0.771 0.867 0.033 0.086 0.097 →→(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

2

S12 10.412 0.469 0.711 0.323 0.045 0.068 0.031 →↘(bedroom),

→↘(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

0

S13 9.294 0.526 0.134 0.804 0.057 0.014 0.087 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S14 12.590 0.720 0.252 0.976 0.057 0.020 0.078 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S15 8.143 0.355 0.100 0.119 0.044 0.012 0.015 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

1

S16 7.806 0.360 0.168 0.174 0.046 0.022 0.022 →↘(bedroom),

→↘(noise),

→↘(there),

→↘(tonelessly)

0

Av. 12.608 0.440 0.266 0.713 0.037 0.023 0.056

NS 6.030 0.448 0.410 0.517 0.074 0.068 0.086 →↘(bedroom),

→→(noise),

→↘(there),

→→(tonelessly)

2

Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the utterances produced by the native English speaker

and one Hong Kong participant. According to the English speaker’s data, the major

pauses for the sentence occurred at clause or phrase boundaries. The major pauses


20

(0.448s, 0.410s, 0.517s) in Figure 1 are those between bedroom and making;

between noise and and; between there and said. The intonation contours are

→↘(bedroom), →→(noise), →↘(there), →→(tonelessly). The two-level tone

expressed boredom and no interest. The pauses occurred at clause or phrase

boundaries. Look at Figure 2. The three major pauses are located at the same places

as those in the native speaker’s, but the duration of the pause was much shorter than

that of the native speaker (0.360s, 0.168s, and 0.174s). The intonation contours are

→↘(bedroom), →↘(noise), →↘(there), →↘(tonelessly). The contours are

relatively fluctuated and repetitive falling tones, even in the last intonation phrase –

said Harry tonelessly. It could be inferred that the participants did not fully process

the meaning of the text and thus failed to read aloud with meaning. Instead of using

level tones, the unmarked falling patterns in the sentence type of statement

reoccurred.

FIGURE 1


Harry tonelessly. – Produced by a Native English Speaker


21

FIGURE 2


Harry tonelessly. – Produced by a Hong Kong (S16) Speaker

DISCUSSION

The importance of phonological awareness to reading ability has been well

explored, but the potential role of prosody in reading development has received little

research attention. This paper investigated the role of prosodic skills at the word-,

phrase- and sentence-level in reading development of learners from Hong Kong,

and clarified the relationship among their prosodic skills, phonological awareness

and reading development.

The results showed that the correct rate of reading comprehension is 38.16%. The

tasks that correlate highest with reading comprehension are non-word reading and

word stress sensitivity tasks and thus they are the two best indicators for the success

of reading comprehension. Rhyme detection, alliteration detection and oral syllable

segmentation were considered too easy for these teenagers and failed to play key

roles in reading comprehension. The tasks that correlate highest with reading aloud


22

are word-level (word stress) and phrase-level sensitivity tasks (rhythm) and thus

they are the two best indicators for the success of reading aloud. Sentence-level

sensitivity, referring to the perception of intonation, was moderately correlated to

reading aloud. It seems there is an asymmetry between perception and production to

some extent for this group of low achievers. Amongst all of the tasks, phrasal rhythm

and word stress (r = 0.78), reading aloud and word stress (r = 0.72), and phrasal

rhythm and syllable segmentation (r = 0.69) were significantly and positively

correlated. The relationship between prosodic sensitivity and reading has been

demonstrated in this study and has echoed those of the recent studies (e.g. Clin,

Wade-Woolley, & Heggie, 2009; Holliman, Wood, & Sheehy, 2010a, 2010b, 2012;

Wood 2006).

Two major indicators for reading comprehension are non-word reading in the

phonological awareness measure, and word stress sensitively in the prosodic skill

measure. In the phonological awareness measure, it was found that the participants

were not able to produce the non-words appropriately, while they had very high

scores in the three perception tasks. The participants’ performances in the tasks

indicate that upon decoding unfamiliar words, some basic phonological rules, such

as the sounds of diphthongs, and the influence of silent –e should be introduced to

ESL learners, particularly to lower achievers. In fact, a couple of participants with

higher correct rates on the tasks expressed their successful use of the analogy

strategy while reading non-words and decoding unfamiliar word stress. They tended

to segment a stimulus into onset and rime. The findings enhanced our belief that

providing awareness raising training is not sufficient for ESL learners to read out the

unfamiliar words properly.

Compared with the phonological measure, the prosodic skills were performed in a

more consistent pattern among word stress, phrasal rhythm, sentential intonation and

reading aloud tasks (correct percentage ranged between 53.39% and 72%). However,

under this measure, only word stress sensitivity has a stronger correlation (r = 0.54)

with reading comprehension. These findings are contradictory to those reported by

Katzir et al. (2006) that there is a strong correlation between a reader’s fluency and

reading comprehension. As Ashby (2006) mentioned, skilled readers process

prosodic information during silent reading. Unskilled readers, like the ESL lower


23

achievers in this study, failed to integrate appropriate top-down reading skills.

Although they seemed to have performed fairly in reading aloud, it did not

necessarily mean they had fully processed the meaning of the text. This

phenomenon may not be found in an L1 acquisition context, but it may be very

possible in an L2 context and especially for ESL lower achievers.

Among the tasks in the prosodic measure, the participants had basic

understanding of prosodic information. For example, pauses should be located in the

phrasal or sentential boundaries. Falling tone should be used in the statement and

rising tones in the question. Yet, some of the pitch changes and pauses are dependent

on the speakers’ attitudes and choices. This implies that these ESL students were

within a developmental stage of acquisition and needed more natural input with

explicit explanations to enable them to read aloud with meaning and achieve

successful communication. If ESL learners can notice that English native speakers

try to say certain words with a higher pitch, representing highlights and turning

points in their message, then they would listen for those words, pay more attention to

them and interpret the underlying meaning effectively, if any. Only if the learners

realise the importance of perception and production of phonological knowledge on

reading development can they have a full and perfect communication, not only with

native English speakers, but also with non-native English speakers.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

This paper has provided evidence showing that non-word reading and word stress

sensitivity tasks are important for reading comprehension. Understanding such

phonological and prosodic factors that weigh most heavily on reading development

has helped ESL teachers establish a hierarchy of priorities for teaching

pronunciation to second or foreign language learners.

In terms of teaching implications, for nonword reading, some teachers have

expressed skepticism regarding the practice of instructing ESL low achievers to

decode nonsense words in class. In fact, they are spelled in predictable ways. For

example, the nonword, dulps, used in this study, makes no sense. Nevertheless,


24

according to the spelling pattern of dulps, it is predictable that its five letters should

be pronounced in the same way they are voiced in five authentic words: the d in

dog, the u in bus, the l in snail, the p in dip and the s in cups. The advantage of

having ESL learners decode nonwords is that it provides teachers a useful means to

determine if these learners can apply phonics rules to read real words. When low

achievers decode nonwords they can only use letters as cues to their recognition, no

meaning is involved in this guessing game. That is, it is no more difficult for ESL

low achievers to decode the nonword, dulps, in isolation, than in a sentence context

(e.g., The dulps fly high). Therefore, it is suggested that instructing how to decode

nonsense words be an effective strategy for ESL low achievers to learn to read and

spell with phonics.

Additionally, ESL teachers should take initiatives to give production training of

analogy strategy or explicit instruction on the rules of English word stress, such as

syllable weight, affixation and lexical category, so as to facilitate learners’

phonological processing abilities. For many Chinese secondary school learners,

simply hearing which elements in a word or sentence receive stress may be difficult

initially. ESL teachers could provide them with clear guidelines concerning which

words (i.e., function or content words) in a sentence tend to receive stress. This will

help them begin to see parallels between word and sentence stress in English.

Nursery rhymes, limericks and jazz chants can provide an effective initial

listen-and-repeat practice activity for such students. With the different levels of

learners, we may use listening discrimination, controlled practice, guided practice

and communicative practice.

For specific techniques in teaching word stress to students, as suggested in

Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2010), teacher has to help clarify

1. how native speakers highlight a stressed syllable (length, volume, pitch);

2. how they produce unstressed syllables (often with vowel reduction);

3. what the three main levels of stress are (strongly stressed, lightly stressed,

unstressed).

Stannard’s work (1965), a classic and useful guide, would help teachers to present

the basic principles of stress, rhythm and intonation easily and it contains a graded

set of exercises for all stages of learning English. Hancock (2003, p52) further


25

illustrates the idea of word stress by using music notes and circles of different sizes

to help students understand better the concept.

Explicit teaching of prosodic features such as pausing/phrasing, intonation, and

pace, for ESL lower achievers, would develop prosodic sensitivity in text reading.

The development of prosodic sensitivity in oral language is dependent on rhythm,

stress and pausing to chunk the speech stream into syntactic units, all of which are

generally modeled by ESL school teachers in the classroom. Prosodic cueing

information in text reading is limited; hence the need for explicit instruction,

modeling and feedback utilizing a strategy that ultimately supports independent,

prosodic reading. Accordingly, a ‘P.I.P.P’ (Phrasing. Intonation. Punctuation. Pace)

teachings strategy designed by Catholic Education Office Melbourne is suggested

for ESL low achievers. The ‘P.I.P.P’ is a cueing device for prosodic reading,

together with three self-management strategies to encourage meta-cognitive

learning. The self-management strategies are: listen to learners’ own voice to see if

it sounds like a storyteller’s voice; reread to restore storytelling voice; and use

self-talk to remind learner self / set personal goals. The explicit teaching of prosodic

features can be effectively included in the reading instruction to develop reading

fluency.

Several limitations are found in this study. Since we did not manipulate

participants’ language levels, one level of language proficiency (i.e., lower

achievers) may not be able to capture the whole picture of the effect of

phonological knowledge on reading development. The interactions among reading

development, prosodic skills and language proficiency are worthy of further

investigation. Second, three tasks in the phonological measure were found to be too

easy for the participants and may not be able to truly reflect their abilities. As most

of the phonological awareness tasks in previous studies were mainly for L1 children,

how to design or choose appropriate tasks of perception and production for

measuring ESL adult learners should be further considered. Finally, expanding the

study to include a larger number of participants with diverse types of learners could

increase the validity of the research results.


26

THE AUTHOR

Chen, Hsueh Chu, Rebecca, is an Assistant Professor of linguistics and modern

language studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Her chief areas of interest

are English as a Second Language and experimental phonetics. She is currently

carrying out research examining intelligibility in the speech of second language

learners. She is also interested in cross-linguistic factors influencing the acquisition

of vowels, rhythm, the role of speech rate in intelligibility, and second-dialect

learning.

Email: [email protected]

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phoneme detection, and learning to read. Developmental Psychology, 26,

429-438.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. (2010). Teaching pronunciation: A reference

for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (2nd edition). Cambridge: CUP.

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awareness in children’s reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104,

197–213

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Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2008). Sensitivity to speech rhythm explains

individual differences in reading ability independently of phonological awareness.

British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 26(3), 357–367.

Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2010a). Does speech rhythm sensitivity predict

children’s reading ability one year later? Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(2),

356–366.

Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2010b). The contribution of sensitivity to speech

rhythm and non-speech rhythm to early reading development. Educational

Psychology, 30(3), 247–267.

Holliman, A.J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2012). A cross-sectional study of prosodic

sensitivity and reading difficulties. Journal of Research in Reading, 35(1), 32–48.

Hudson, R. F., Lane, H. B., & Pullen, P. C. (2005). Reading fluency assessment and

instruction: What, why, and how? Reading Teacher, 58(8), 702-714.

Kamil, M. L., Mosenthal, P. B., Pearson, P. D., & Barr, R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of

reading research (Vol. 3). London: Erlbaum.

Katzir, T., Kim, Y., Wolf, M., O'Brien, B., Kennedy, B., Lovett, M., et al. (2006). Reading

fluency: The whole is more than the parts. Annals of Dyslexia, 56(1), 51-82.

Kitzen, K. (2001). Prosodic sensitivity, morphological ability, and reading ability in young

adults with and without childhood histories of reading difficulty. Unpublished doctoral

dissertation, University of Colombia, Colombia.

Major, R. C. (2001). Foreign accent: The ontogeny and phylogeny of second language

phonology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Stannard, A. W. (1965). Living English speech: Stress and intonation practice for the foreign

student. London: Longmans Green.

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word-reading strategies. Scientific Studies of Reading, 6(1), 79-115.

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and spelling (pp. 7–23). London: Routledge.

APPENDIX

A. Phonological Awareness Tasks (Perception)

I. Rhyme detection

Please cross out the word that does not rhyme with the others. An example has done

for you. Each question will be read twice.

e.g. a. cat b. ant c. bat answer: b

1 a. bake b. lake c. bike answer:__________

2 a. cup b. mop c. top answer:__________

3 a. clock b. block c. disk answer:__________

4 a. can b. man c. lam answer:__________

5 a. let b. pen c. ten answer:__________

6 a. box b. pot c. fox answer:__________

7 a. goat b. coat c. mast answer:__________

8 a. pop b. hot c. hop answer:__________

9 a. king b. wing c. swim answer:__________

10 a. wide b. hide c. lime answer:__________


29

II. Alliteration detection

Please cross out the word that does not have the same beginning sound. An example

has done for you. Each question will be read twice.

e.g. a. fat b. taxi c. fire answer: b

1 a. glue b. clown c. glass answer:__________

2 a. dress b. drawer c. train answer:__________

3 a. black b. blog c. clock answer:__________

4 a. funny b. find c. pink answer:__________

5 a. milk b. mice c. nice answer:__________

6 a. mop b. sun c. man answer:__________

7 a. lake b. nice c. late answer:__________

8 a. son b. fish c. sock answer:__________

9 a. pig b. leaf c. log answer:__________

10 a. dog b. ten c. dish answer:__________


30

III. Oral Segmentation-syllables

Please indicate the number of syllables in each word.

Number of syllables

1. flow

2. flower

3. renew

4. picture

5. keyboard

6. select

7. await

8. jealous

9. memory

10. copybook

11. assimilation

12. specialize

13. vocabulary

14. internationalism

15. representative


31

Phonological Awareness Task (production)

IV. Non-Word Reading

Please read the following words in sixty seconds.

dulps yoofs phils

cresh thoiled fleaved

croill coashed smurphs

brive triffth falp

ketts jelmbs chude

B. Prosodic Sensitivity Tasks (Perception)

I. Word-level Prosodic Sensitivity Task

Put the following words, in full, in the column which shows the correct stress

pattern. today tomorrow holiday electrician journalist musician businessman

economics fifteen rapturously stupid excellent company party

dinner tonelessly position pretend bedroom exactly introduce

fifteen welcome o'clock

Oo oO Ooo oOo ooO Oooo ooOo

II. Phrasal and Sentence-level Prosodic Sensitivity Task

Listen to the following sentences and phrases and put them in the correct column.

A. The water’s cold.

D. What do you want?

G. What did she say?

J. Where’s the car?

M. Don’t move!

P. Does he drive?

S. Take care!

B. Come and look.

E. The bus was late.

H. Phone and tell me.

K. It’s cold and wet.

N. Carry on!

Q. Were you cold?

T. Keep calm!

C. Close the windows.

F. Is it fun?

I. Nice to see you.

L. What’s the time?

O. Hurry up!

R. Give me a call.


32

OooO oOoO OoO OoOo OO ooO

III. Sentence-level Prosodic Sensitivity Task (perception in intonation)

Listen to the sentence or the dialogue and circle the correct expression conveyed.

Example:

There are two people talking about what to eat tonight.

a. I want dumplings.

b. Dumplings

What do you think “b” ‘s intention is?

Affirming (Yes, dumplings.)

Questioning (What? Say it again.)

1. How many items does “a” want?

A. One

B. Two

C. Three

2. How many people are going to a movie tomorrow?

A. Two

B. Three

C. Four

3. What do you think “a” is not receiving?

A. Hamburger

B. Tea

C. Both

4. What does “b” feel about having hot pot for dinner?

A. Appreciation. (Yes, I like it.)

B. Dislike. (No, I don’t like it.)

C. Sympathy. (I agree with you.)


33

5.What does “b” feel about John’s going to the concert?

A. Appreciation. (Yes, I llike it.)

B. Dislike. (No, I don’t like it.)


6. What does “b” feel about a’s vacation?

A. Appreciation. (I like your vacation.)

B. Dislike. (I don’t like it.)


7. What does “b” feel about a’s situation?

A. Appreciation. (I like what happened to you.)


C. Sympathy. (I know how you feel.)

8. What do you think “b” is stressing?

A. The boy is cute.

B. The boy is a new comer.

C. The boy is who “b” is talking about.

9. How does “b” think about a’s behavior?

A. Appreciation. (I like what you did.)


C. Sympathy. (I know how you feel.)

10. How does “b” think about the traffic time?

A. Appreciation. (It’s good, we can go.)

B. Surprising. (It’s too long.)

C. Denial. (I don’t go.)


34

Prosodic Sensitivity Task (production)

IV. Textual-level Prosodic Sensitivity (production in pause, speed and intonation)

Read aloud the following passage.

Harry went back to his toast. Of course, he thought bitterly, Uncle Vernon was

talking about the stupid dinner party. He'd been talking of nothing else for two

weeks. Some rich builder and his wife were coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon

was hoping to get a huge order from him.

"I think we should run through the schedule one more time," said Uncle Vernon.

"We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Penny, you will be -?"

"In the lounge," said Aunt Penny promptly, "waiting to welcome them graciously to

our home."

"Good, good. And Mike?"

"I'll be waiting to open the door." Mike put on a foul, simpering smile. "May I take

your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?"

"They'll love him!" cried Aunt Penny rapturously.

"Excellent, Mike," said Uncle Vernon. Then he rounded on Harry. "And you?"

"I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry

tonelessly.

"Exactly," said Uncle Vernon nastily. "I will lead them into the lounge, introduce

you, Penny, and pour them drinks at eight- fifteen "

(Revised version of extraction from Harry Potter and Chamber Secret)

the roles of phonological knowledge in l2 lower achievers

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