Erfolge und Grenzen des DaF-Prosodietrainings für Deutschlernende mit romanischen Muttersprachen

Abstract

Although the importance of prosody for oral communication is widely acknowledged, it is often neglected in second language (L2) pedagogy. To address this gap, researchers have developed and tested prosody training programs. In this article, I aim to highlight the successes and limitations of such training measures based on the literature and previous studies I have conducted on the prosodic marking of information structure in German. I compare two corpora that were compiled using the same data collection method: one with 40 Italian learners of German who did not receive prosody training, and another with 12 learners whose first languages are South American varieties of Spanish and who received formal prosody instruction. In this way, differences and similarities in the prosodic marking of information structure between learners with and without prosodic instruction can be identified. The results indicate that certain non-native patterns appear to represent a common phase in L2 language development. While positive effects of prosody training are evident, they are limited, suggesting a need for further research—particularly with regard to the development of more effective curricula.