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Discourse Intonation of English in Malaysia and Singapore: Implications for Wider Communication and Teaching

The teaching of pronunciation has for a long time concentrated on segmental features. Increasingly, however, writers and researchers have called for greater emphasis to be placed on the teaching of suprasegmentals because of their influence on intelligibility. The purpose of this article is to reiterate that call for the teaching of English prosody, particularly intonation, to learners of English. This is done through an examination of discourse intonation features of English spoken in Malaysia and Singapore. Using the discourse intonation model by David Brazil (Brazil, Coulthard & Johns 1980, Brazil 1997) as a theoretical framework, this article describes seven common intonation features and discusses how these features may affect communication with English speakers from other countries. It also examines implications for teaching, with particular reference to national English language programmes. Although this discussion is based on Malaysia and Singapore, it may be of interest to other readers in Southeast Asia, where the acquisition of good English pronunciation has become increasingly important in national curricula.