Contrastive Prosody in SLA: An Empirical Study with Italian Learners of German

This paper presents a prosody-centred pronunciation training method specifically addressed to Italian learners of German. Empirical results obtained with a pre- and post-test-designed analysis comparing segment-centred with prosody-centred pronunciation training are investigated in view both of specific prosodic and segmental aspects and of motivational implications. Statistically significant different improvement rates in the two procedures illustrate the positive effects of a prosody-centred training on L2-German pronunciation giving evidence of the priority of prosody in pronunciation training and thus in teaching practice in SLA and in L2 phonetic acquisition.