Self-imitation in prosody training: A study on Japanese learners of Italian

The proficiency in a second language is fully attained only if
students have learnt to modulate the rhythmic and prosodic
parameters equivalent to those of the native speakers. This
study is aimed to test the pedagogical effectiveness of the selfimitation
technique for the purpose of developing a native-like
prosodic competence. Seven intermediate Japanese learners of
Italian (NNSs) and 2 native Italian speakers (NSs) were
involved in a read speech activity. NSs and NNSs were asked
to read and record two Italian sentences conveying three
different pragmatic functions (granting, order, request). NNSs
performed the task twice, before and after the self-imitation
prosodic training. The items used for the training were
obtained by transferring the suprasegmental features of the
native speakers, used as donors, to the Japanese learners,
considered as the receivers. During the training phase,
Japanese learners mimic their utterances previously modified
to match the prosody of the reference native speaker, and then
recorded the new performance. Seventeen native Italian
listeners rated pre- and post-training productions for pragmatic
function and accentedness. The results indicate that selfimitation
promoted an improvement in learners' performances
in terms of communicative effectiveness. Conversely, average
rate of accentedness does not change significantly before and
after training