Information structure in university lectures in English as a foreign language in Argentina

Flagstaff

Congreso; 11th Annual Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference; 2019

Northern Arizona University

University lectures have long been the focus of research due to their paradigmaticimportance as the main channels of instruction at this educational level. In the context of this study (i.e., the teacher and translator training courses at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina), English is the medium of instruction. Although this is very convenient for students, it poses a great challenge for the L1 Spanish-speaking professors, who need to be linguistically competent so as to provide students with a good model in the foreign language and to assist learners to meet the challenge of comprehension. This expertise also comprises the level of phonology, a key aspect to understanding in oral communication. The aim of this paper is to present a phonological analysis of the structure of information in discourse of two extracts of teaching presentations delivered in English by Spanish-speaking lecturers. The results are matched against characterizations of the Spanish and the English prominence and tone systems and are discussed in light of previous research.