Serbian EFL Learners’ Utterance Meaning Interpretation Based on Intonation Cues

Abstract

Most of the EFL intonation studies focus on the production level, slightly disregarding the level of perception. The present study hence aims at exploring Serbian EFL learners’ ability to interpret foreign language utterances relying on the intonation of native speakers. The participants listened to the examples from the corpus and had to decide upon the meaning of the articulated sentence depending on the intonation contour of the utterance. The listening material was collected from British TV shows and films, combined with native speakers’ utterances from the previously recorded material, and the results were compared and discussed. Having in mind that the correct perception precedes accurate production, we sought to explore the level of Serbian EFL learners’ proficiency in perception of L2 intonation and thus provide possible suggestions for the enhancement of production.