Van Maastricht interviewed Catalan people who were learning English, together with her Spanish colleague Núria Esteve-Gibert. In previous research, Esteve-Gibert discovered that young children who are not yet able to use intonation to indicate where important or new information is in a sentence can already do so non-verbally, through head movements and facial expressions. Van Maastricht was curious to find out whether adults might also be able to compensate for their incorrect intonation with non-verbal information.
Wrong emphasis
The linguists let Spanish students learning English via an online connection watch a game in which the fictional character Anna takes items out of a bag. The participants were allowed to say what Anna should take, for example: Grab the yellow sock. Sometimes there is both a red and a yellow sock. In that case, participants must say grab the YELLOW sock, while if there is a yellow sock and a yellow T-shirt in the bag, they should say grab the yellow SOCK, to indicate that it is the sock and not the shirt. From video recordings, the researchers were able to determine where participants placed the emphasis in the sentence and how they moved their faces while speaking.
The researchers discovered that Catalan adults did indeed use head movements when speaking English, but that these movements did not help them to learn the correct English intonation. In fact, they had the opposite effect. “They actually copy both the gestures and the intonation from their native language into the new language,” says Van Maastricht. “As a result, they are unable to convey certain information in the new language and can mislead native speakers.”
These types of sounds in a language, such as stress and intonation, are very important in communication. If you place the stress incorrectly in the new language, the meaning of a sentence can change completely. In Spanish, for example, HAblo means “I speak,” but haBLÓ with the stress on the ó means “he spoke.” And Dutch people learning Spanish often have difficulty with sentences such as ¿Quiere café con leche o café sin leche? – Would you like coffee with milk or without milk? Dutch people say CON leche o SIN leche, with the emphasis on ‘with’ or ‘without’, but this is confusing for Spaniards: they usually place the emphasis at the end of the sentence (con leche o sin LECHE), regardless of whether that word is important in the sentence or not. If you do this incorrectly, it is confusing for native speakers.
Learning correct pronunciation
This is not necessarily good news for language learners, according to the researcher. “If children are not yet able to speak properly, they can still convey what they mean through nonverbal communication. Unfortunately, this does not work for adult non-native speakers, because they seem to transfer their nonverbal communication from their native language to the new language.” Can the correct intonation be trained? 'That varies from person to person. Practice always helps, but in general it is difficult for beginner language students to also learn how the intonation patterns of their foreign language differ from those of their native language.'
According to Van Maastricht, language teachers can take this into account. “As a teacher, it is good to be aware of the importance of pronunciation. There is often too little time for this component, as lessons are very focused on grammar and vocabulary. But if someone says ‘I bought’ instead of ‘I bought,’ you still understand what they mean, whereas incorrect intonation can really prevent someone from understanding you.”
In addition, the researcher—who is also a language teacher—recommends seeking out as much input as possible in the foreign language you are learning. For example, by watching series and films in that language, even if they are subtitled. “This is very beneficial, because your brain stores information about pronunciation and sentence structures without you even realizing it.”