Anyone who has ever tried to surf knows that it is not easy to actually catch a wave. A person has to paddle the surfboard out to where the waves are and work on his/her timing and paddle fast enough to catch the wave. In this article, the author chooses the surfing metaphor in accordance with the theme of the 2006 CALICO conference at the…

Present definitions of proficiency and communicative competence ignore intonation as part of higher-level discourse, despite clear evidence that intonation plays a role in negotiating discourse meanings. Intonation practice should be incorporated into classroom discourse activities. (MSE)

A study investigated the intonational patterns used by women and men at the ends of utterances for the purpose of managing discourse. The research sought to describe how intonation helps to signal that a speaker is through speaking and desires a response or reaction from the listener, or that the speaker is not through with a turn and wishes to…

Recent linguistic research has focused on the actual uses or functions of language. Parallel to the development of discourse analysis, traditional language learning and teaching philosophies and methodologies have been supplemented or replaced by functional approaches, focusing on developing communicative competence, beyond strictly grammatical…

Discusses the theoretical foundations of discourse analysis and intonation and emphasizes that intonation has received little attention in the communicative competence or proficiency movements, despite the fact that intonation is a powerful tool for negotiating meaning, managing interaction, and achieving discourse coherence. (CB)

An acoustic study of German focused on voice frequency at sentence-, turn-, and discourse-end in conversations. The data were drawn from short dialogues in which the same word occurs at the ends of utterances, in the middle of a turn, at the end of a turn, and at the end of a discourse. The dialogues were read 10 times by a male and a female…

Reviews research on the acquisition of suprasegmentals by second language learners and the potential of computer-based instructional materials for improving intonation; describes and critiques some of the software previously available for this purpose; and suggests criteria for the conceptualization of multimedia software and concomitant research…