Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/jezik.2022.69.25
The Effect of Elementary School Teaching Methods on the Learning of Standard Croatian Tone
Veno Volenec,
orcid.org/0000-0002-4589-877X
; Concordia University, Montreal, Kanada
*
Maja Colnago
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent the elementary school lessons
designed to teach accents actually lead to an improvement of students’ competencies in that
domain. On the basis of insight into the very few existing previous studies on the matter,
we have hypothesized that before formal accent training, students of the seventh and eighth
grade of elementary school in Zagreb will not correctly pronounce the Standard Croatian
tones, and that the teaching methods in this area will have a severely limited effect. The
production of tones was recorded during the academic year 2017/2018 in a group of 34 students
before and after accent training (as part of their regular class activities), which was
followed by acoustic analysis and statistical processing. The results showed that before their
accent lessons, the students correctly produced falling tones, but during the same phase
they have systematically failed to produce rising tones. Even though the class activities have
indeed positively contributed to the learning of short-rising and long-rising accents, this
effect has been smaller than 10 %. The paper discusses various ways in which elementary
school teaching methods can be improved so as to lead to better learning outcomes in the
domain of Standard Croatian prosody
Keywords
accent; tone; elementary school; teaching methods; Standard Croatian language
Hrčak ID:
311106
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2022.
Visits: 217 *