The Importance of Context Awareness for the Selection of Discourse Prominence

San Miguel de Tucumán

Jornada; Segundas Jornadas de Actualización para Profesores de Inglés; 2010

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán

This paper is a proposal for the training in prominence allocation allowing for the analysis and practice of language as used in context. A prosodic feature, prominence is defined as ?a linguistic choice available to the speaker independent of the grammatical structure of his utterance and the accents of the citation forms of the independent words? (Coulthard, 1992, p. 39). In addition, two cognitive approaches to second language acquisition provide the theoretical backbone supporting the training proposed. Finally, a number of texts are used to illustrate specific prominence selections and  possible procedures and activities are recommended as part of the instruction.