二语朗读中不当停顿的感知研究

The Perception of Unnatural Pauses in L2 English Read Speech

不当停顿是影响二语朗读流利性的重要反向指标。本研究通过感知实验,分析了国内外38名听者在中国大学生英语朗读语料中所标记的不当停顿。研究发现,对二语朗读中不当停顿的感知不仅受到停顿时长和句法位置的影响,还与朗读者语音问题密切相关。虽然较长的停顿和短语内部停顿更容易被感知为不当停顿,但被感知的不当停顿还包括超短和主观停顿,以及语义关系紧密的句法单位边界上的停顿。同时,不符合英语韵律特征的语音问题也会被感知为不当停顿。本研究的发现对英语教学及研究均有积极意义。

Unnatural pauses,perceived as interruptions in the speech flow,are significant in marking affected L2 English oral reading fluency.The present study investigated 38 listeners’perception of unnatural pauses in Chinese learners’English read speech.The study found that the perception of unnatural pauses was affected not only by the duration and syntactic location of the pauses,but also by the phonological errors in the read speech.Longer pauses and within-in phrase pauses were more easily perceived as unnatural.However perceived unnatural pauses also included extremely short pauses(<133 ms),subjective pauses(=Oms),and pauses at phrase/clause boundaries when they broke the tight semantic bonds.Besides phonological errors played a similar role to pauses as prosodic boundary cues in the perception.The findings of this study have implications for the English teaching and research in China.