Il Lexical Approach nei corsi di fonetica tedesca

This article shows how it is possible to implement Lewis’ Lexical Approach in L2 phonetic courses. Starting from the specific knowledge of the students’ pronunciation defects, a training method is proposed, which is primarily aimed at correcting prosodic errors and fossilized prosodic features in L2-German of Italian learners, thus at developing prosodic competence in L2. This pronunciation training method is specifically addressed to Italian learners of German and is centred on prosody, treated within a contrastive German-Italian framework. Correct prosodic perception is attained by correct identification of L2-suprasegmentals, achieved by monitoring L1-suprasegmentals. This effect percolates to other levels resulting in correct German prosody and segmentals. Once learners acquire a rudimentary prosodic competence, many phonological interferences disappear. This suggests that accentuation and intonation of chunks and larger phrasal units have a controlling function over syllables and segments. Prosody as a basis for a contrastive approach in language teaching is sensitive, because from the beginning learners effortlessly and unconsciously avoid mistakes which otherwise would hinder them from correctly acquiring L2.