“Developing linguistic competence in second language learning: fluency and prosody in Italian learners of German”

The most common and direct form of communication in our daily life is spoken interaction. However, in second language (L2) classrooms most attention is given to grammar and vocabulary, neglecting fundamental speaking-specific aspects, such as prosody and fluency. Prosody plays a central role in conveying the meaning of utterances and paralinguistic information about speakers’ attitudes. Fluency is an indicator of the amount of effort needed to speak an L2 and contributes to the perception of smoothness and naturalness of speech. Moreover, neglecting these aspects during L2 learning can undermine learners’ intelligibility and comprehensibility in oral communication. A shift in L2 teaching from a knowledge-centred method to a learner-centred method may greatly increase its effectiveness, as learners’ profiles, in particular their previous knowledge and language background, influence the learning process.

The present research project aims to shed light on the role of learner-specific profiles in L2 learning, investigating the effects of the native language (L1) on L2 fluency and prosody throughout the learning process. For this purpose, the development of L2 prosodic and interactional competence will be investigated in Neapolitan Italian learners of German at different levels of L2 proficiency.

The first section of the project is dedicated to the under-investigated field of L2 fluency in interaction. I will problematise the lack of methods in previous research to assess of the co-created fluency by L2 speakers in dialogues and propose a possible procedure for its comprehensive analysis.

The second section focuses on L2 prosodic marking of information structure, including focus types and domains and degrees of givenness. Previous studies using a binary classification (accented or deaccented) show that Italian speakers do not distinguish between new and given items post-focally, a feature that they negatively transfer to their L2 German, a language that is reported to mark post-foal given information with deaccentuation. I will analyse the continuous modulation of prosodic parameters and show that these measures provide additional and important information for the understanding of this phenomenon in both native Italian and L2 German. These parameters will also be applied to native German dialogues.

This research will extend the body of knowledge on L2 learning of prosody and fluency. Its findings will not only provide the theoretical basis for the teacher’s need to focus on learner-specific profiles, increasing the chance of effective transmission of knowledge and skills, but will also lay the groundwork for devising training programmes for Italian learners of German. Indeed, once learners’ difficulties have been identified, it will be possible to create effective educational tools to improve their communicative skills in L2, dealing with the deviations which have the most detrimental effect on communication, as assessed by native listeners.

 

Mercator Praxis Phase

Currently, there is no or very little collaboration between the fields of L2 pedagogy and the latest research in L2 acquisition. This is especially true for the fields of L2 phonetics and phonology, which are also the most neglected aspects in L2 classrooms.

My research project aims to be beneficial to both research and pedagogy extending the little investigated body of knowledge concerning fluency and prosody in L2 learning and facilitating concrete applications in L2 pedagogical practices. In detail:

1. The method of visualisation and quantification of oral interactions proposed in the study on L2 fluency permits an immediate comparison of learners’ interactional behaviour in L1 and L2 and can be used to observe the development of L2 interactional competence across proficiency levels. For this reason, this tool represents a valid starting point for a standardised quantification of L2 interactional competence. In L2 assessment, it could provide homogeneously collected evidence for the qualitative evaluation based on the CEFR, the interpretation of which may include a certain degree of subjectivity.

2. The findings of the study on L2 prosody will lay the groundwork for devising prosodic training programmes for Italian learners of German with the ultimate goal of improving their communicative skills in L2. Moreover, they will provide a wider theoretical basis for the necessity to focus on learner-specific profiles especially in multilingual L2 language classrooms and learners with different native languages could benefit from a prosodic training based on the results of this study.

The results of the two above-presented studies could be integrated into teaching methods to increase the chance of effective transmission of communicative skills, to which prosody and fluency provide a major contribution. A collaboration with the Carl Duisberg Centrum, Köln, which offers German language courses with speakers with a wide range of first languages, will help me to bridge the gap between L2 research and L2 teaching and expand this study to learners with native languages other than Italian.

 

Short Biography

Simona Sbranna graduated in 2018 in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Salerno (Italy) with a focus on linguistics and language teaching. During her studies, she spent two semesters at the University of Cologne, concluded a traineeship at the Dante Alighieri Institute of Seville as a teacher of Italian as a foreign language, and a traineeship at AISV (Italian Association for Voice Sciences). After the M.A. she was employed for a semester at the University of Salerno as a graduate teaching and research assistant. 2018 she was awarded a “Predoc” scholarship by a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities. Since 2019 she is a doctoral student within a.r.t.e.s. Integrated Track and carries out her research project under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Martine Grice.

Contact: s.sbranna(at)outlook.com

 

Publications

Sbranna S., Möking E., Wehrle S., Grice M., (under review). “Backchannelling across Languages: Rate, Lexical Choice and Intonation in L1 Italian, L1 German and L2 German”. 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 2022, conference proceedings.

Savino, M., Sbranna, S., Ventura, C., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (under review). “Imitating intonation in a non-native variety: the influence of the native repertoire”. 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 2022, conference proceedings.

Sbranna, S., Cangemi F. and Grice, M. (in press). “Quantifying L2 interactional competence”. XVI AISV Conference “Language variation under contact conditions: acquisitional contexts, languages, dialects and minorities in Italy and around the world”, 2019, conference proceedings.

Alfano I., Savy R., Sbranna S., Schettino L., (2018). “Strategie discorsive in spagnolo L1 e L2 a confronto: un'indagine su corpora dialogici”. CHIMERA: Romance Corpora and Linguistic Studies. Vol 5, No 1, 27-52. Congreso de Lingüística de Corpus en Español (CLICE 2018), conference proceedings.

 

Presentations

Sbranna S., Möking E., Wehrle S., Grice M., (2022). “Backchannelling across Languages: Rate, Lexical Choice and Intonation in L1 Italian, L1 German and L2 German”. 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody, University of Lisabon, Lisabon, Portugal, 23-26 May 2022. [Talk]

Sbranna, S., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2022), “L2 acquisition: continuous modulation of prosodic parameters or categorical (de)accentuation?”. 10th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 20-22 April 2022. [Talk]

Sbranna, S., Wehrle, S. and Grice, M. (2022), “The use of Backchannels and other Very Short Utterances by Italian Learners of German”. XVIII AISV Conference “The position of the speaker in interaction: attitudes, intentions, and emotions in verbal communication”, University of Naples "Federico II", Naples, Italy, 7-8 February, 2022. [Talk]

Sbranna, S., Ventura, C., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2021), “Developing prosodic competence: marking information status in L2 German”. TAI 2021: 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Sønderborg, Denmark, 6-9 December 2021. [Poster]

Sbranna, S., Ventura, C., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2021), “Prosodic marking of information status: an exploratory study on L1 Italian and L2 German”. TiPToP Workshop: Trends in Pedagogical Transmission of Prosody, Universität Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany, 12-13 October 2021. [Talk]

Sbranna S., Wherle, S. and Grice, M. (2021), “Developing L2 Interactional Competence: Turn-taking across proficiency levels”. P&P 2021: Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, September 29-30, 2021. [Talk]

Savino, M., Ventura, C., Sbranna, S., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2021), “Native variety interference when imitating intonation in a non-native variety of Italian”. 4th PaPE – Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, Barcelona, Spain, 21-23 June, 2021. [Poster]

Sbranna, S., Ventura, C., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2021), “Prosodic expression of information status in Italian”. 4th PaPE – Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, Barcelona, Spain, 21-23 June, 2021. [Poster]

Sbranna, S., Ventura, C., Albert, A. and Grice, M. (2021), “Prosodic marking of information status in L1 Italian and L2 German”. XVII AISV Conference “Speaker Individuality in Phonetics and Speech Sciences: Speech Technology and Forensic Applications”, University of Zürich, Switzerland, 4-5 February 2021. [Talk]

Sbranna, S. (2021), “Developing linguistic competence in second language learning: fluency and prosody in Italian learners of German”. Research Colloquium IfL – Phonetik, University of Cologne, January 2021. [Invited talk]

Sbranna, S., Cangemi F. and Grice, M. (2020), “Reconceiving fluency as an indicator of L2 interactional competence”. P&P 2020: Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum, Universität Trier, Trier, Germany, 10-11 September 2020. [Talk]

Sbranna, S., Cangemi F. and Grice, M. (2020), “Quantifying L2 interactional competence”. XVI AISV Conference “Language variation under contact conditions: acquisitional contexts, languages, dialects and minorities in Italy and around the world”, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy, 29-31 January 2020. [Talk]

Sbranna, S., Cangemi F. and Grice, M. (2019), “Towards quantifying conversational competence in second language learning”. P&P 2019: Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany, 26–27 September 2019. [Poster]

Cataldo V., Savy R., Sbranna S. (2019). “Prosodic Transfer in Foreign Language Learning: a phonetic crosscheck of intonation and F0 range between Italian and German native and non-native speakers”. ICLLPCA 2019: 21st International Conference on Language Learning and Phonetic Coding Ability, Paris, February 21 - 22, 2019. [Accepted for conference presentation]

 

Teaching Experience

WS 2021/2022. M.A. Seminar “Laboratory Phonology”, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, Germany.

SS 2021. B.A. Seminar “The Phonetics of Second Language Learning”, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, Germany.

SS 2018. Seminar “Applied Linguistics”, Department of Humanities, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy.

 

Organised Events

5-8 October, 2021. Paris-Cologne Collaborative Meeting (PCCM) 7 "Quantifying and interpreting variability in speech", Université Paris Diderot (Paris 7), France, and University of Cologne, Germany.

2019, Kinderuni workshop “Unsere Stimme“, University of Cologne, Germany.

 

Awards

2022, one-year scholarship by Mercator institute at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for Humanities, Cologne.

2021, IPA student travel grant.

2021, ISCA student travel grant.

2021, CCLS Travel grant for conference attendance: PaPE 2021, Barcelona, Spain.

2021, CCLS Travel grant for conference attendance: AISV 2021, Zürich, Switzerland.

2020, CCLS Travel grant for conference attendance: AISV 2020, Rende, Italy.

2019, CCLS Travel grant for summer school SMLP 2019 Introductory Frequentist Statistics at University of Potsdam, Germany.

2019, CCLS Travel grant for conference attendance: Phonetics and Phonology in Europe 2019, Lecce, Italy.

2019, DAAD Research Grants – One-Year Grant (unable to accept owing to concurrent a.r.t.e.s. scholarship).

2019, a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for Humanities, Integrated Track scholarship, University of Cologne.

2018, a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for Humanities, “Predoc” scholarship, University of Cologne.

2017, Scholarship “Erasmus Traineeship” for “Dante Alighieri” Institute, Seville, Spain.

2016, Erasmus + scholarship for exchange semester at University of Cologne, Germany.

2015, Erasmus + scholarship for exchange semester at University of Cologne, Germany.

 

_{Cover photo: The role of prosody in communication and comprehension (Credit: Katarzyna Tyl, Pixabay, modfied by Simona Sbranna) // Portrait photo: Patric Fouad}