Oral Reading Rate and Prosody in Direct and Indirect Speech Among Native Cantonese Speaking Young Adolescents

Oral Reading Rate and Prosody in Direct and Indirect Speech Among Native Cantonese Speaking Young Adolescents

在日常溝通中，人們透過運用直述句的表達次數較複述句多。然而，香港教育體制中，學生從小學到中學，在聽、說、讀、寫四方面均已需要運用直述句和複述句。學生對這兩種句式在口語表達上可能出現不同的韻律和語言流暢度。本研究目的是探究以廣東話為母語的學童在運用直述句和複述句的韻律和語言流暢度。本研究共邀請了八位正常發展的高小學生為研究對象，他們需要對直述句和複述句在不同語法和不同內容下進行朗讀。從結果所得，語調（韻律）在直述句和複述句中有顯著性差異。另外，語速（語言流暢度）在不同句子類別間存在顯著性差異。再者，研究找出語調、音強、語速和停頓時間平均值之間有顯著關聯性，但韻律和語言流暢度之間並沒有顯著關聯性。這意味著韻律和語言流暢度之間的關聯性仍然存在不明因素或沒有直接用來分別直述句和複述句的指示。此外，發展正常的學童在朗讀不同句子情況時，能表現出充足的語言能力來調節韻律和語速。因此，研究結果未能由此顯示出韻律和語言流暢度在直述句和複述句間的關係。

In daily communication, the use of direct speech is more common than indirect speech. However, in primary school, students needed to use both quoting style in reading, writing, speaking, and listening areas until secondary school level. The expression in direct and indirect speech could be different in terms of prosody and fluency. The current study is to examine the reading rate and prosody in direct and indirect speech among native Cantonese speaking young adolescents. There are eight typical developed upper primary school children took part in this study and read aloud sentences under different syntactic and semantic situations. It was found that the prosody – pitch was significantly different between direct and indirect speech quotations. Also, the fluency – reading rate was significantly different between sentence types. Moreover, the correlation between pitch and intensity, reading rate and mean pause duration were significant. However, no correlation between prosody and fluency has been found. This suggests that the differences between direct and indirect speech in terms of prosody and fluency were still unclear and without straight indicator to distinguish them. Besides, the typical developed children showed sufficient language abilities to adjust their prosody and fluency when reading different quoting materials. Therefore, no apparent relationship between prosody and fluency has been found.