The objectives of this book are to emphasize the importance of intonation within the discourse domain and to draw upon research to suggest ways of teaching discourse-based intonation to second language (L2) learners. This book is organized in three parts. The first provides an overview of linguistic theories on prosodic elements. In this part, the author discusses four major categories of intonation according to function: grammatical (e.g., using intonation to mark prominence or stress), affective (e.g., to express attitudes or emotions), sociolinguistic (e.g., to signal politeness), and, importantly in this book, discourse (e.g., to contribute to cohesion in speech). Part 2 takes a look back at L2 research on pronunciation and intonation and the early teaching focus on individual sounds. This leads to the discussion of the current and future direction for teaching that emphasizes the discourse level of speech with an eye toward developing interactional competence at the macro level of communication. Studies have shown that improvement in the functional use of prosody contributes to higher production ratings for L2 speakers (Wennerstrom, 1998).

Part 3 begins with a brief review of traditional materials in and approaches to the teaching of intonation, followed by suggestions on the teaching of stress, rhythm, and intonation within the aforementioned major functional categories. Chun encourages the use of authentic speech and interactions as a basis for pedagogical models of intonation in order to capture the context-dependent nature of the interpretation of intonation. The pedagogical guidelines in Part 3 are supplemented by numerous figures showing the application of recent technological developments that allow the visualization of pitch contours, waveforms, and amplitude curves. These displays are not only helpful for the purpose of informing nonlinguists but also demonstrate the contribution that technology can make in the teaching of L2 prosody, given that these visual displays—especially the pitch contours—are sources of informative feedback for learners in their L2 production (Hardison, 2004).

The companion CD-ROM, which requires Flash 5 player and QuickTime 5 (or newer versions), plays the examples that correspond to figure numbers in the text. Most of the figures were generated by a Web-based software program accessible to other researchers and teachers. Chun notes that computer-based speech tools can be effective in the recording and analysis of natural speech samples and in the teaching of the communicative and sociocultural functions of discourse-level communication by providing visual displays of speech components. Moreover, these tools provide immediate feedback to improve perception and production. They can also serve as data collection tools that allow a researcher to record learner performance over time.

The book has a very readable style and provides theoretical foundations for its practical applications. To demonstrate crosslinguistic contrasts in prosodic elements, reference is made to German, French, Spanish, and Chinese, in addition to English. This also emphasizes that the role of technology in teaching intonation and the importance of natural contextualized speech input are applicable to the teaching of languages other than English. The CD-ROM brings to life the complexities of intonation, highlights the contribution of technology in this field, and underscores the need to raise awareness of the patterns and functions of intonation as well as the need to teach prosody in context using natural speech samples. The content of the book is accessible to nonspecialists and will be of particular interest to language teachers and researchers in L2 speech, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics.