الوصف: |
This paper describes a method of conveying an appreciation of English rhythm to non-native speakers of English by using musical scores. Comparison of the scores of English, French, and Japanese songs reveals a sharp difference between English on one hand and French and Japanese on the other in the distribution of syllable duration. Counting syllables and plotting histograms of note values is an easy way of experiencing English rhythm especially for learners of English whose native language is not stress-timed. It is a simplified, visual counterpart of the normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI), which calculates durational contrast between successive elements in a sequence. |