The role of exposure to second language on the development of prosodic competence. The case of English.

Preliminary studies on Italian-accented English have shown that Italian speakers fail to achieve successful communication in English because they do not modulate the L2 rhythmic and prosodic parameters in the same way as is done by English native speakers. Considering that the prosodic competence in a second language is the result of a complex set of variables, this study is aimed at investigating the role of learning context and exposure to L2 in achieving an English native-like prosodic proficiency. Through two different speech tasks, the acquisition of suprasegmental features of L2 English was analysed. Two groups of participants were involved: 2 Italian high-school students who learned English only in a classroom context and 2 subjects who studied the target language in Italy and in the USA. The results showed that the exposure to the L2 in a native context facilitates the identification of the informative prosodic boundaries and enhances the awareness that diverse question types correspond to different intonation patterns.