Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
As the vehicle for China's modernization and participation in the process ofeconomic globalization and with China's intent to become a major player ininternational affairs，English language proficiency becomes increasingly necessary foreveryone. Therefore, it is the most widely taught foreign language in China and Chinahas the largest English learning population all over the world. English language teaching has been and will continue to be, an important part of China's reform andmodernization. In the course of English learning and teaching, pronunciation andintonation play an essential role. And great efforts have been made to promote theEnglish learning and teaching efficiency. However, the results have not beensatisfactory up to now. The acquisition of English intonation always poses an obstacleto Chinese EFL learners. Under such context, the thesis intends to make someexplorations in this respect.
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1.2 Significance and Necessity of the Study
The significance of English intonation in communication cannot beoverestimated. The function of intonation can be summarized into four aspects: thesemantic function, which means that intonation may differentiate the meaning of anutterance; the attitudinal function, which means that intonation can indicate speaker'sattitude to a situation, reactions to events and emotions to various responses;grammatical function, which may help to understand the correlation betweenintonation and sentence type; the accentual function, which means that prominence inEnglish is used to highlight what is new and important information in an utterance,place special emphasis and show contrast.In the process of English learning, the intonation is probably the most difficultelement to acquire in the language，without which one can never speak like a nativespeaker. In daily communication, faulty intonation and defects in intonation can soundfunny and even lead to misunderstandings.As is known to all，pronunciation and intonation are two essential elements inEnglish teaching. However, much attention has been paid to the learning and teachingof English pronunciation，英语毕业论文，while the research and teaching of English intonation hasalways been neglected. Consequently, misunderstanding is a frequent occurrence inthe communication between Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Basic Concept of the Terms Involved
In linguistics，intonation is defined as variation of spoken pitch. It is not used todistinguish words; instead it is used for a variety of fimctions such as expressing theattitudes and emotions of the speaker，indicating the difference between statement andquestion，英语毕业论文，and between different types of question, focusing attention on importantelements of the spoken message and helping to regulate conversational interaction. Itcontrasts with tone, in which pitch variation in some languages does distinguishwords，either lexically or grammatically. The term tone is used by some Britishwriters in their descriptions of intonation, but this is to refer to the pitch movementfound on the nucleus or tonic syllable in an intonation unit.Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation，it is important to beaware
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