There are few studies which have explored the way paralinguistic
information varies across different languages, specifically languages of
tone versus languages of stress. It has been shown that speakers of tone
use less F0 related cues in the production of verbal expressions of
emotions than speakers of stress do. This study proposes a new method of
teaching English intonation patterns, specifically those that aid in the
expression of emotion, to speakers of tone languages. A total of 12
participants were tested, all who spoke English as their second language, 8
whose first language was tone based. One portion of the participants
reacted to and mimicked an exaggerated group of recordings while the other
portion reacted to the non-exaggerated version of these same recordings. 2
scoring methods were used during the analysis portion of our experiment.
The first was a visual scoring process. Each of the participants' pitch
contours were compared directly against the model’s using the Praat
software. The second method was a perceptual one. During this scoring
process we had 2 scorers listen to the recordings of all the participants. Both scorers
indicated the emotion they perceived for statement. Our results show that
the participants who responded to the exaggerated version of the model's
recordings received more accurate and consistent perceptual ratings. Anger
was the most difficult emotion for the participants to imitate and for both
scorers to recognize. Identifying effective language learning strategies
will have important implications in language teaching.