Improving non-native pronunciation: Teaching prosody to learners of Spanish as a second/foreign language

This chapter covers the arrangement of prosodic structure, stress, speech rhythm, intonational trends based on utterance type, phonological frameworks used to study intonation, and variation, as well as why the topic in general is pragmatically and socially important. It also summarizes a wide range of pedagogical approaches to teaching the prosody of different utterance types. The practical portion of the chapter provides teachers with suggestions for incorporating prosody in different levels of Spanish classes while urging them to, for example: gain some knowledge of phonetics, consider linguistic variation, use natural speech samples, implement pre-training exercises, be sensitive to the L1, begin practicing prosody early, and take advantage of chunks of speech, literature and songs, technology, and non-verbal communication. Finally, the chapter’s Appendix provides a detailed sample activity on yes–no question intonation.