Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
2011. Vol.1, No.2, 33-38
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. DOI:10.4236/ojml.2011.12005
The Impact of First Language Intonational Clue Selection on
Second Language Comprehension
Leila Barati, Reza Biria
English Department, Islamic Azad University Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran.
Received August 2nd, 2011; revised November 1st, 2011; accepted November 8th, 2011.
Comprehension is closely related not only to the knowledge of words and syntax, but also the pragmatic con-
cerns of the discourse. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of the intonational clues
selection of Iranian teenagers’ and young adults’ Persian listening comprehension ability on their English learn-
ing as a second language. According to Buck (2003), in listening comprehension the input in the form of sounds
and intonational clues often conveys additional information. In this study 60 male and female teenagers (13 - 19)
and 60 male and female young adults (20 - 26) were selected randomly based on Oxford Placement Test (OPT).
Each group was randomly assigned to two sub groups; namely, experimental (EX) and control groups (CG), 15
participants in each group. During the study two fiction and non-fiction passages, at first in Persian and then in
English, were read to participants. The passages for participants in CG were read without applying speaker’s in-
tonation changes but they were read for participants in EX with applying speaker’s intonation changes. In this
study factors as age and gender are important because the results showed that the difference between two groups
with different age ranges was significant, and participants’ inferencing, correct clue selection and listening com-
prehension ability in the experimental group was superior to the control group in the first language (Persian) and
it also influenced positively second la ngu ag e l e a r n i n g a nd inferencing ability (English).
Keywords: Listening Comprehension, I ntonation Clues, Inference, Pra gmatic, Knowledge
Introduction
Utterance is a linguistic act in which one person expresses
towards another, within a single intonation contour, a relatively
coherent communicative intention in a communicative context.
Intonation is used by speakers to mark the pragmatic force of
the information in an utterance in spoken interaction a tone of
voice, a feeling about the way our partner spoke, the atmos-
phere of a conversation are often more significant cues to the
real message than the words themselves. They also give some
syllables a greater degree of loudness and change their speech
rhythm. These phenomena are called intonation. Comprehen-
sion is an active process in which a listener selects and inter-
prets information which comes from auditory and contextual
clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers
are trying to express (Rubin, 1995, 2002). Role of culture in
language learning and teaching, as another factor, was investi-
gated by Genc and Bada (2005). The study gives evidence that
cultural background knowledge affects not only the compre-
hension scores and the recall of text propositions, but also the
reading efficiency of children acquiring literacy in a first and
second language. The results are most striking for comprehen-
sion scores.
In listening comprehension participants concentrate on se-
lected aspects of aural input, form meaning from passages, and
associate what they hear with existing knowledge. In making
inferences learners use intra-lingual, contextual and inter-lin-
gual clue selection. This kind of clue selection relates to the
features of the new word and listeners’ information about pho-
nology, morphology, word class and collections to guess the
meaning of the text or speakers’ utterances. Analysis of cultural
evidence should allow us to arrive at a much more accurate
description, and thus understanding, of the relationship between
recurrent linguistic forms and their function in discourse.
Accordingly, the learners select information from the audi-
tory cues according to their personal knowledge and different
situations for understanding the meaning of the materials read
and comprehension of these materials (Hassan, 2000; Crimick
& Hill, 2001). Learners relied mostly on contextual clues when
they tried to guess meanings from context. Huckin and Bloch
(2002) measured the influence of contextual clues and sche-
matic knowledge on learners ability to guess and comprehend
the meaning from context.
Fiction and non-fiction passages were used to investigate if
patterns existed between imaginary information and facts. Non-
fiction is literature that is not fictional (Mish, 2005). However,
nonfiction has a different framework Fiction texts are associ-
ated with feelings and memories, as they are a distinctive
manifestation of cultural values and perceptions. Besides, they
present linguistic forms, grammar, phrases, vocabulary, and
formulaic speech within a meaningful and structured context
that supports comprehension of the narrative world (Glazer &
Burke, 1994; Koisawalia, 2005). In fiction, a reader has to
identify the characters and follow the events of the story.
However, nonfiction has a different framework. In non-fiction,
a listener needs to comprehend the topic, learn new facts related
to it, and be able to find and remember important information
(Scharer, Pinnell, & Fountas, 2005).
Accordingly, the main purpose of this research is to investi-
gate the impact of first language intonational clue selection on
second language comprehension ability. On this basis, the fol-
lowing research questions are formulated:
1) Is there any relationship between Persian teenagers’ and
young adults’ inferencing, listening comprehension and intona-
tional clues?
2) Does first-language intonation clue selection affect sec-
ond-language comprehension?

L. BARATI ET AL. 34
Review of the Literature
Listening is a receptive skill in which listeners actively proc-
ess information based on their schematic knowledge, as their
comprehension depends on their personal experiences from the
real world. Comprehension is the process of constructing the
interpretation of what the text is about. Anderson & Lynch
(2003) state that one of the reasons why the listener fails to
process incoming speech is that the speech contains words or
phrases that the listener can hear adequately but is unable to
understand because of serious problems with the syntax or se-
mantics of the language. Gebhard (2005) points out that com-
prehension can only occur when the listener can place what he
hears in a context. Building background knowledge and topic
familiarity about context of listening texts could lead the par-
ticipants to improve their listening comprehension to a signifi-
cant extent during this study. As background knowledge and
contextual information have important role in listening compre-
hension ability, Some studies have dealt with the role of con-
textual clues or ba c kg r ou n d knowledge at the discourse level.
According to Adams (2002), presupposed knowledge and
mental reference influence the listeners’s inferencing of the
intended meaning. According to Couper, Kuhlen and Selting
(2001), a speaker’s utterances are context-sensitive, it means
that they are especially constructed to fit the particular location
and occasion of their use. The process whereby participants
construct context via such cues in order to make utterances
interpretable has come to be known as contextualization (Auer
& Luzio, 2009).
Typically the supra-segmental properties guide the interpre-
tation process while the segmental cues serve to access words
in the mental lexicon. Prosodic features serve to break up the
continuous utterance into clauses and phrases by the presence
of pauses and boundary-marking pitch changes, and to mark
one syllable or word as the focus of the speaker’s attention
within the accentuation prosodic cues include stress, rhythm
and intonation and listeners use information about prosodic
phrasing (Clark, 2008). Naturally, in spoken interaction a tone
of voice, a feeling about the way our partner spoke, the atmos-
phere of a conversation are often more significant cues to the
real message than the words themselves. They also give some
syllables a greater degree of loudness and change their speech
rhythm. These phenomena are called intonation. Intonation pa-
tterns often differ between languages or even between varieties
of the same language. Speakers mark the pragmatic force of the
information in an utterance. As a result, intonational events can
often provide information to the listener about the prosodic
structure, in addition to carrying a pragmatic message. Since
each speaker has unique physiological characteristics of speech
production and speaking style, speaker-specific characteristics
are also reflected in prosody. Speaker-specific prosody and
idiosyncrasies that are recognized by the listener, either con-
sciously or otherwise (Fujio, 2007). June (2005) classifies Per-
sian with English, German, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Po-
rtuguese, Arabic, and Bininj Gun-wok as “stress-accent” lan-
guages, i.e., languages in which a certain syllable in a word is
more prominent than other syllables by phonetic factors, show-
ing syntagmatic contrast. Pitch accents in Persian occur on the
lexically stressed syllables (Eslami & Bijankhan, 2003). In this
regard, some works have been done on Persian intonation,
which include Eslami (2003) and Mahjani (2003). The smallest
intonational unit in Persian is the accentual phrase (AP) with
the pitch accent L + H* associating with the stressed syllable.
Methodology
It is used by speakers to mark the pragmatic force of the in-
formation in an utterance. As a result, intonational events can
often provide information to the listener about the prosodic
structure, in addition to carrying a pragmatic message. In spo-
ken interaction a tone of voice, a feeling about the way speaker
spoke, the atmosphere’ of a conversation often give significant
cues to different age groups of listeners for inferencing. Ac-
cording to Keene and Zimmerman (1997), inferring is going
beyond the literal text for weaving utterance into our mind as a
meaningful communi ca t i o n.
This study investigates how correct intonation clues selection
from both fiction and non-fiction passages in speaker’s utter-
ance has influence on two age ranges of teenagers and young
adults’ Persian inferencing as their first language and the influ-
ence of that on English inferencing as their second language.
The participants included 60 male and female teenagers and 60
male and female young adults. The age range for the teenagers
and young adults were chosen from 13 - 19 and 20 - 26 age
ranges respectively. Teenagers and young adults have different
mental experiences and background knowledge and accordingly
have different inference from fiction and non-fiction passages.
For example, teenagers inferences are more based on real world
facts than personal experiences while young adults inferences
are more related to their background knowledge and experi-
ences.
All participants were native speakers of Farsi that were
learning English as a second language. The samples were ran-
domly chosen from 100 male and female teenagers and 100
male and female young adults studying in an English Language
Center in Iran. The students who after Oxford Placement Test
(OPT), toke scores between 15 to 18 participate in this study
were divided in two groups of Control Group (CG) and Ex-
perimental Group (EX). The situation for both group were the
same and only the materials for testing their comprehension
were different. During the study two fiction and non-fiction
passages were read aloud without intonational changes to par-
ticipants in CG. Then, the same passages were read with into-
national changes to participants in EX and they were asked
some questions about the passages.
The materials for testing participants’ inferencing and evalu-
ating their second language listening comprehension ability of
making schematic references consisted of two fiction and two
non-fiction passages (one in Persian and one in English) that
were read aloud to participants. The passages were created
according to Leslie Holzhauser-Peters, M.S., CCC-SLP, and
author. The passages were no more than 150 words. Each pas-
sage was submitted to The Lexiles (2008) Framework1 for
Reading and Listening which matches the appropriate grade
level to each text. Each text was given a lexile score, which
indicated what grade level, corresponded with each passage.
By the way, responses were recorded verbatim. In Table 1,
participants were given comprehension scores according to
their logical thinking, clue selection and mental inferencing
from zero to four based on Lexile’s score:
Results
After participant, according to OPT, were randomly chosen,
1This is a framework for reading and listening which matches the appro-
p
riate sco re to each text b ased on degree o f difficult y of text and each text
was given a Lexile sc or e from zero to four.

L. BARATI ET AL. 35
Table 1.
Explanation of participants’ inference/logica l th in ki ng of the passages.
Lexile’s Score Participant ’s inferencing and clue selection
4 Participants make logical inference and mental thinking
most of the tim e
3 Participants make logical inference and mental thinking
some of the tim e
2 Participants don’t make logical inference and mental
thinking s ome of the time
1 Participants don’t make logical inference and mental
thinking m ost of the time
0 Participants didn’t attempt to guess or explain
during the study and then two fiction and non-fiction passages
were read aloud to both gender (male and female) and age
(teenagers and young adults) participants in CG and Ex, then,
learners responses to speakers question about the passages were
recorded verbatim. The Tables 2 and 3 show the statistical re-
sults of this study.
As Tables 2 and 3 indicate, the greatest mean score (M =
3.53) belonged to the comprehension of non-fiction passages in
the experimental group and the lowest mean score (2.21) be-
longed to the comprehension of non-fiction in the control group.
Ability in the experimental group is greater than for the control
group.
According to Tables 4 and 5, the greatest mean score (M =
3.75) belonged to the comprehension of fiction passages in the
experimental group and the lowest mean score (2) belonged to
the comprehension of fiction in CG. So, as these tables show,
second language learners in EX have listening comprehension
ability than control group. The following Tables (6-9) show the
impact of intonation on two age groups of teenagers and young
adults from second language listening comprehension ability of
fiction and non-fiction passages.
Comparing Tables 6-9 indicate that the greatest mean score
(M = 3.63) belonged to the young adults comprehension of
non-fiction passages in the experimental group and the lowest
mean score (2.66) belonged to the young adults comprehension
of non-fiction in the control group. In general, as tables statisti-
cally describe, age as a variable influenced second language
listening comprehension ability in experimental group more
than control group. Statistical analysis of this study are pre-
sented in the Table 10.
As Tables 10 and 11 demonstrates, gender as a variable had
meaningful impact on the listening comprehending ability.
Significant level of this variable on the first and second lan-
guage listening comprehension (Respectively, .003 and .013)
was less than .05. It means that there is significant difference
between male and females listening comprehension ability of
Persian and English.
Also according to these two tables, both their native language
and their second language intonation clues make a significant
difference and the impact of the added experience that being
older provides also was significant.
Discussion and Conclusions
According to findings of this study, the investigations are in
agreement with some previous researches pointing to the im-
portance of listening comprehension ability on the development
of inference ability such as Wagner (2006).
Table 2.
First language listening comprehension test without considering into-
nation changes.
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 60 .00 4.00 2.8667 .87269
Non-Fiction 60 .00 4.00 2.2167 .86537
Valid N (listwise)60
Table 3.
First language listening comprehension with considering intonation
changes.
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 60 2.00 4.00 3.2500 .60014
Non-Fiction 60 2.00 4.00 3.5333 .68064
Valid N (listwise)60
Table 4.
Second language listening comprehension test without considering
intonation changes.
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std.Deviation
Fiction 30 .00 4.00 2.0033 .935
Non-Fiction 30 2.00 4.00 2.1667 .592
Valid N (listwise)30
Table 5.
Second language listening comprehension test with considering intona-
tion changes.
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 30 2.00 4.00 3.7500 .004
Non-Fiction 30 .00 4.00 3.4667 .006
Valid N (listwise)30
Table 6.
Teenagers second language listening comprehension test without con-
sidering intonation changes.
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 30 .00 4.00 2.7000 1.02217
Non-Fiction 30 .00 4.00 2.7667 .89763
Valid N (listwise)30
Table 7.
Young adults second language listening comprehension test without
considering intonation cha ng es .
N MinimumMaximum Mean Std.Deviation
Fiction 30 2.00 4.00 3.0333 .66868
Non-Fiction 30 .00 4.00 2.6667 .84418
Valid N (listwse)30

L. BARATI ET AL. 36
Table 8.
Teenagers second language listening comprehension test with consid-
ering intonation chang es .
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 30 2.004.00 3.1333 .57135
Non-Fiction 30 2.004.00 3.0333 .71840
Valid N (listwise) 30
Table 9.
Young adults second language listening comprehension test with con-
sidering intonation changes.
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Fiction 30 2.004.00 3.3667 .61495
Non-Fiction 30 3.004.00 3.6333 .49013
Valid N (listwise) 30
Table 10.
The significant result of first lan g uage listening comprehension test.
Source Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Intercept 2220.417 1 2220.417 4005.728.000
Gender .017 1 .017 .030 .003
Age 4.267 1 4.267 7.697 .006
Intonation 15.000 1 15.000 27.061 .000
Error 63.300 116 .554
Table 11.
The significant result of second language l is te ni ng co mprehension test.
Source Type I II
Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Intercept 2220.417 1 2220.417 4005.728.000
Gender .017 1 .017 .030 .013
Age 4.267 1 4.267 7.697 .008
Intonation 15.000 1 15.000 27.061 .001
Error 64.300 116 .554
Leslie and Caldwell (2000) found evidence that skilled
learners have higher levels of prior knowledge and understood
and comprehended the text better and more accurately than
poorer. Since listening comprehension needs some previous
information and personal experience, the listeners of both lan-
guages (Persian and English) who make mental inference by
means of background knowledge are more successful in this
ability. In fact, background knowledge and personal experience
based on cultural and social features is individually different.
The results of this study indicate that teenagers in both groups
and gender inference based on their personal experiences while
young adults inferencing of texts are based on the real world
and facts.
Duke (2000) defined informational context as what had a
function to communicate information about the natural or social
world, an expectation of durable factual information, timeless
verb construction, generic noun construction, technical vo-
cabulary, definitional material, compare/contrast, problem/so-
lution, cause/effect, or similar text structures, frequent repeti-
tions of the topical theme and graphical elements such as dia-
grams, indices, page numbers, and maps.
In this study fiction and non-fiction passages were used to
investigate if patterns existed between imaginary information
and learners’ inference of real facts. As fiction texts are associ-
ated with feelings and are distinctive manifestation of cultural
values and perceptions, in this study fiction passages were cho-
sen as part of the overall texts. When learners listen to fiction
passage, as mental states are central in narrative texts, can use
mental reference and emotional features to make personal in-
ference.
On the other hands, non-fiction has a different framework. In
non-fiction, a reader or listener needs to comprehend the topic,
learn new facts related to it, and be able to find and remember
important information (Scharer, Pinnell, Lyons, & Fountas,
2005).
Boynton and Blevins (2004) emphasized the fact that listen-
ing and understanding nonfiction text demands abstract think-
ing. They accessed, comprehend, and integrated related con-
cepts and ideas. According to Wagner (2006), results indicated
that students’ clue selection, logical thinking abilities, and over-
all inferential thinking abilities were more developed in fiction
passages than nonfiction passages. Also according to the dis-
criptive results of the present study, females comprehension of
fiction passages is more than males. In the other words, males
comprehension of non-fiction passages in this study is more
than females.
Besides, Richards & Anderson (2003) believe that inferenc-
ing is a strategic process in comprehension which one generates
assumptions, makes predictions, and comes to conclusions
based on the given information. So, linguistic information in
the form of speech and written text is ultimately essential for
making inferences and associations between text information
and knowledge about the world.
The schema is the mental map or set of mental connections
in mind about a particular idea of thing (Myhill, Jones, & Hop-
per, 2006). Studies investigated that schematic knowledge fa-
cilitates comprehension and helps listeners deal with barriers in
communication. Therefore, in order to inferencing take place
and lead to meaningful comprehension, making schematic in-
terpretation needed. As a result, when listeners cannot generate
inferences, they fail to comprehend with implied information in
other parts of the passage.
Buck (2003), Lynch and Mevald (2009), believe that speech
is linear and encoded in the form of sound with the presence of
a rich prosody (stress, intonation, rhythm, loudness and more)
which is absent from the written language.
According to Hassan (2000) listener selects information from
the auditory cues according to personal knowledge. Therefore,
in listening comprehension process, the phonological informa-
tion are the first things that listener receives from speakers
speech and matches them with his mental information and iden-
tifies, interprets and comprehends meaning of the words or
phrases he listened to. Learners as the first step of listening
comprehension identifies sound signals according to speakers’
utterances and selects intonational clues of the overall context.
Listening comprehension involves interaction with a speaker
and requires prior experience of a listener to interpret what the
speaker says (Jeo, 2007). According to Buck (2001), listening

L. BARATI ET AL. 37
involves both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. It means
that, linguistic knowledge relates to knowledge of phonology,
lexis, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, pragmatics and
sociolinguistics, whereas non-linguistic refers to knowledge of
the topic, the context and general knowledge about the world
and how it works.
According to the present study, background knowledge had
an important role in using mental schematic references to in-
ference and make comprehension. Different cognitive and so-
cial factors as personal experience, mental schematic, culture,
gender, age and etc. influence inferencing skill.
According to the results of this study, when speaker (Both
Persian and English languages) does not apply intonational co-
unters in the utterance and speakers prosodic knowledge is
inadequate, inferencing will not be made correctly and com-
prehension will be weak or incorrect. On the other hand, when
learner is not familiar with the prosodic system and contextual
features of the language the attention-focusing mechanism will
not be employed and as a result comprehension cannot cor-
rectly be ma de.
By rising and lowering the pitch of the voices change degree
of loudness and speech rhythm speakers can express different
emotion by means of intonational cues. The significant gains of
the experimental group in this study stated that considering
intonational clues in the speakers utterance had positive impact
on listeners comprehension. For the experimental group, the
pitch of the voice raised and lowered to form pitch patterns as
intonnational clues of utterance. Each intonation clue as a pro-
sodic characteristic in speech reveals some important informa-
tion regarding the identity of the spoken language.
Present study concluded that con sidering intonational changes,
age and gender factors in speakers utterance, influenced correct
inferencing and comprehension ability. In this study, when
these factors implied on Persian students, who were learning
English as a second language, the results showed that those
students who select intonational clues of the first language cor-
rectly for comprehending passages were those English learners
who had the most Lexiles scores of inferencing and compre-
hension ability. According to the results of this study and pre-
vious researches, future studies can investigate the influence of
another factors on inference and comprehension ability such as
culture, society and economy.
Acknowledgements
I have had great fortune during this studies. I would like to
express my special appreciation to Dr. Reza Biria whose in-
valuable suggestions and constructive comments helped me in
accomplishing this study. Finally I would like to thank all of the
students and teachers who took part in the experiment.
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