Intonation Teaching & Training in Hong Kong
The teaching of intonation has its focus on interactive communication training. The interaction emphasises the need to act and communicate with each other. To Hong Kong speakers of English, they need to create for themselves the urge to communicate in English as English is the commonly used for daily communication. English is mainly learnt and studied in schools.
The communicative approach gains its support in the instructional design of the pronunciation teaching materials which is mainly achieved through kinds of role plays activities in the classroom.
The teaching of intonation takes the notion to negotiate meaning in conversation. In other words, speakers and hearers must co-operate, make joint efforts to understand, and repair misunderstanding. There are at least three approaches suggested by Kenworthy (1992). They are attitudinal approaches, functional approaches, and discourse approaches.
