The Effects of Teaching Prosody on L2 Listening Comprehension

The prosodic features are known to be the meaning- bearing units for effective communication and learners in L2 as well as L1 make use of the prosodic cues both in production and comprehension. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effectiveness of teaching the prosodic features in L2 learners' listening comprehension. The participants were eighteen students who enrolled in a pronunciation practice course at a 3-year college located in a local city of Korea. The pre- and post tests were given at the beginning and end of 15 week training on word stress, rhythm, and intonation. The tests were analyzed by a paired t-test to investigate the improvement of listening comprehension ability. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the tests except one part of them, which means that the prosodic features affect L2 listening process in a certain type of the task. The limitations of the current study remain for further investigation utilizing different types of tasks and measures.