On the acquisition of english rhythm: Theoretical and practical issues

Authors

  • Bertha Chela-Flores Universidad de Chile

Abstract

The inability to focus on thee rhythmic pattern as a whole is suggested in this paper as one of the main deficiencies in teaching English rhythm and partly responsable for a syllabic rhythm in the speech of the EFL learner. A technique is proposed in which the patterns are first isolated from their segmental phones and sequences with which they co-occur in language. This has been found to increase the learner's acuity in perceiving the same feature in normal language behaviour.