Effects of L1 on L2 pronunciation: Italian prosody in English

Studies suggest that prosody plays a critical role in the production and perception of L2 speech, but more research is needed to investigate L2 prosodic patterns and their effects on perceived foreign accent, intelligibility and speech interactions. A pilot study was conducted to investigate the effects of Italian L1 prosody in English. 2 native English speakers and 8 Italian speakers of English produced a variety of English sentences. The prosodic patterns of the recorded sentences were analyzed using the speech analysis software Praat. The analysis showed that, while native English speakers’ intonation is characterized by prominence peaks and contours with variations in modulations depending on sentence types, Italian speakers’ intonation in English is characterized by rather flat and unvaried contours. The observed differences suggest that the two groups produce and respond to very different prosodic information, which may affect Italians’ intelligibility and successful communication in English. This calls for further investigation with perception tests. The study also addressed the question of whether an increased awareness of English prosody could improve prosodic productions in L2. Praat was used to provide Italian students with audio-visual feedback on their productions in English, to raise their awareness of the differences between L1 and L2 prosody, and to help them produce prosodic patterns resembling the native speakers’. This method proved to be effective, and shows that improvement is possible in an area like prosody which has traditionally been considered hard to teach.