INTONATION AS A MEANS TO BETTER UT-HCMC STUDENTS’ COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

Abstract

Although recognized as one of the significant constituents of English pronunciation, intonation has been one of the most neglected areas not only in classroom but also in materials purposely designed for teaching and learning English, which inevitably leads to a worrying result - learners’ regular failure in conversational exchanges with native speakers of English due to misunderstanding and/or being misunderstood caused by their inadequate awareness of intonation. Without any exceptions, students at University of Transport in Ho Chi Minh City (abbreviated to UT-HCMC) have to suffer the same problem. This paper, therefore, attempts to highlight the fact that teaching intonation to students at UT-HCMC does work in enhancing their communication competence. By presenting communicative values of basic intonation patterns and recommending some effective and applicable strategies for teaching intonation drawn from a long process of study, observation and experimental teaching done with the participation of 36 students of the English-4 class, the paper is hoped to bring both teachers and students at UT-HCMC a new way of teaching and learning intonation, which hopefully will release both of the subjects from the burden of time- and effort-consuming process of intonation teaching and learning.