Toward an Effective Teaching and Learning of the Igbo Tone

Abstract

This paper is a pedagogic study of the Igbo tone. It is a descriptive research. It identifies tone as one of the most problematic aspects of the Igbo language teaching and learning.  Conceptually, it associates the main problem of learning tone with its being a prosodic feature. It is superimposed on the segments in all its forms. This characteristic makes the identification of the pitch level of each tone in a word problematic for the teacher and student.  In addition, the tone pattern of some words varies from dialect to dialect, and therefore from dialect to the Standard Igbo. This fact makes it necessary that both the teacher and the learner have to be abreast with the tone pattern of each lexical item in the particular variety concerned to get the tone mark right. Furthermore, the tone patterns of the Igbo words change when the words bearing them occur together in a grammatical construction. The paper provides answers to questions regarding how to identify the tone pattern of individual words and words in associative constructions in the Igbo language in a teaching learning situation. It further provides a didactic step by step procedure for marking tone in the Igbo language grammar bearing in mind the available tone marking conventions in the literature. The teacher no doubt needs to know this procedure as a working tool for effective teaching and learning of tone in particular and Igbo grammar in general. The learner needs it even more to have a firm grasp of it and Igbo grammar generally.