Fadhilah, Aghitsna (2026) Exploring Emotional Intonation In EFL Students' Speech Recordings. S1 thesis, Universitas Islam Nusantara.

	Text cover.pdf Download (110kB)
	Text lembar pengesahan.pdf Download (133kB)
	Text abstract.pdf Download (11kB)
	Text daftar isi.pdf Download (560kB)
	Text chapter I.pdf Download (70kB)
	Text chapter II.pdf Download (131kB)
	Text chapter III.pdf Download (130kB)
	Text chapter IV.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (399kB) | Request a copy
	Text chapter V.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (72kB) | Request a copy
	Text references.pdf Download (75kB)

Abstract

Speaking instruction in EFL classrooms often prioritizes grammatical accuracy and pronunciation over suprasegmental features such as intonation, leaving the emotional dimension of spoken English comparatively underexamined. This study explored how emotional intonation is acoustically realized in the speech of Indonesian university EFL students, focusing on four target emotions: joy, sadness, calmness, and anxiety. Using a quantitative descriptive design, twenty-five students were recruited to perform three semantically neutral, emotion-ambiguous sentences under each emotion, guided by situational cues; recordings were analyzed acoustically using Praat to extract fundamental frequency (F0), pitch range, and intensity. After excluding corrupted files, 243 usable recordings from 21 participants were analyzed. Results showed that joy was the most acoustically distinctive emotion, marked by the highest mean F0 (287.07 Hz) and by far the widest mean pitch range (243.11 Hz) of the four categories. Sadness and calmness, both low-arousal emotions, produced flatter, lower-pitched contours, while anxiety occupied an intermediate position, showing only a modest elevation over the low-arousal emotions despite its theoretical classification as high-arousal alongside joy. These findings suggest that arousal level alone does not fully account for how EFL students realize emotion acoustically, and that valence and non-pitch cues such as pacing may also play a role, particularly for anxiety. The study demonstrates that Praat-based acoustic analysis offers a more objective way of examining emotional expression in EFL speech than impressionistic listening, and it points to calmness, sadness, and anxiety as emotions that may need more targeted classroom attention than joy in teaching emotional intonation.

Actions (login required)

View Item