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studies, it further points out the strengths andweaknesses of those researches based on which, this study makes it more scientific.

2.1 Theoretical Basis
Intonation, an academic term of suprasegmental phonology, refers to the pitch changesin spoken language (O'Connor & Arnold 1973: 1), and therefore intonation studies are oftenmanifested from syllable salience (stress), the pitch fluctuation and so on (Allen1971;Cruttenden 1997;Halliday 1967,1970;Ladd1996;Tench 1996).In acoustics, intonation isoften realized by pitch, intensity, duration, pause and some other features (Crystal 1997;Levis 1999). It can be applied for many functions, for instance, grammatical indicatoridentification (phrase, clause), sentence type reminder (declarative sentence, interrogativesentence), and implicating speaker’s attitude (surprise, satire or anger); except above,intonation also has close relation with information transmission. Intonation concerns thesyllables with salience, how make the salience and the degree of the salience as well as theissues that how the salience shifts in pitch contour form (Cruttenden, 1997). Intonation, at thesame time, is the carrier of information which gives different pitch expressions forcorresponding information (Halliday, 1967). So, intonation does not only mean pitch changes,but also some other factors of prosody, for example, the stressed syllables, pause, andintonation focus in an intonation group.
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2.2 Studies of EFL Learners’ Intonation Abroad
Intonation studies of the native speakers have been done comprehensively with differentaspects. And all these can be summarized and grouped into two sides: theoretical explorationand empirical studies. As this study is empirical, the empirical one is analyzed in details fromthe views of study subjects, design and results.Study of English intonation has gone through a long process. The early researchesfocused on the manifestations of intonation. Brazil (1980) extended intonation study to otherlinguistics aspects and held the idea that the pitch could be affected by personal traits, social,cultural and emotional factors. Tench (1990) proposed that intonation was of both linguisticsand paralinguistic functions and the former concerned the activity of transitional information itself and the latter concerned transistor.Hirst(1977) summarized the characteristics of English intonation; some scholarsgathered and compiled articles of discourse intonation (John-Lewis, 1986); Wartenburger andTelkemeyer (1988) made an observational study of 4-year old children about their Englishprosody characteristics; Wells(2006) described the English intonation grouping andprocedures methods of native speakers; Wichmann ( 1988) studied intonation features ofarticles and discourse. Chen (2009) did research on the intonation perception in secondlanguage; Mennen (2007) studied the impacts of intonation in English phonology, phonetics.Munro(2008) analyzed the relationship between the foreign intonation and languagecomprehensibility; Nguyen, Ingram, Pensalfini (2008) discussed intonation transfer in theacquisition process of Vietnamese English learning; Pickering (2009) explored the pragmaticauxiliary functions of intonation for non-native speakers in English. Francisco Gutiérrez Díez(2013) systemically summarized the trouble spots in the learning of English intonation bySpanish speakers and he proposed that most developmental tonality errors do not