Self-imitation in prosody training: A study on Japanese learners of Italian

The proficiency in a second language is fully attained only if\ud students have learnt to modulate the rhythmic and prosodic\ud parameters equivalent to those of the native speakers. This\ud study is aimed to test the pedagogical effectiveness of the selfimitation\ud technique for the purpose of developing a native-like\ud prosodic competence. Seven intermediate Japanese learners of\ud Italian (NNSs) and 2 native Italian speakers (NSs) were\ud involved in a read speech activity. NSs and NNSs were asked\ud to read and record two Italian sentences conveying three\ud different pragmatic functions (granting, order, request). NNSs\ud performed the task twice, before and after the self-imitation\ud prosodic training. The items used for the training were\ud obtained by transferring the suprasegmental features of the\ud native speakers, used as donors, to the Japanese learners,\ud considered as the receivers. During the training phase,\ud Japanese learners mimic their utterances previously modified\ud to match the prosody of the reference native speaker, and then\ud recorded the new performance. Seventeen native Italian\ud listeners rated pre- and post-training productions for pragmatic\ud function and accentedness. The results indicate that selfimitation\ud promoted an improvement in learners' performances\ud in terms of communicative effectiveness. Conversely, average\ud rate of accentedness does not change significantly before and\ud after trainin