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Chapter One Introduction 

1.1 Research Background 
As we all know, information is communicated not only through the choices of words  and  the  order  we  arrange  these  words,  but  also  by  the  intonation  that  is attached to it. Intonation is synonymous with speech melody and it mainly depends on  the  fundamental  pitch  of  the  voice  (Bolinger,  1986).  And  as  a  supra-segmental feature, intonation can be used to indicate the sentence pattern we say is a declarative sentence  or  an  interrogative  sentence.  In  addition,  it  can  pass  speaker’s  attitude  to their  hearers  and  draw  the  listeners’  attention  to  the  special  part  of  an  utterance. Moreover,  the  correct  usage  of  intonation  may  eliminate  semantic  confusion  and reduce foreign accent. Therefore, intonation is always used by speakers to represent communicative connotations, which is quite significant in our daily communication.  However, little attention has been paid to students’ intonation in the process of second  language  teaching.  In  general,  there  are  several  reasons  that  should  be responsible  for  this  phenomenon.  At  first,  the  English  teachers  in  our  country  pay more attention to the accurate pronunciation of individual words or syllables, so that the  second  language  learners  are  perfect  in  words’  pronunciation  but  weak  in utterances’  intonation.  However,  it  is  a  common  sense  that  native  speakers  can tolerate  the  imperfect  pronunciation  more  than  the  wrong  intonation,  thus,  the teaching  focus  deviates  from  the  practical  application.  Secondly,  the  language learners  in  our  country  are  told  that  statements  are  fall  while  interrogative  and exclamatory  sentences are  raise  and  students  just  do  as  this  in  their  daily communication.  But  in  fact,  intonation  is  a  quite  complex  system.  Fossilized intonation  teaching  may  hinder  the  effective  communication  and  lead  to misunderstandings.  
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the study 
The  purpose  of  this  study  is  to  explore  the  intonational  features  of  statements produced by Northeastern English learners. Theoretically,  the  present  study  will  provide  some  theoretical  supports  for reforming  the  language  teaching  in  Chinese  northeastern  area.  Moreover,  it  will verify  the  influences  of  the &本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。