Articulation of prosody and rhythm: some possible applications to language teaching

What is prosody? What is rhythm? How does rhythm vary across languages? How can rhythm be taught to a second language learner? These are some of the topics addressed in this paper, specifically, prosody and rhythm in terms of acoustics,articulation, perception as well as phonological approaches to prosodic/rhythmic organization of speech. Briefly also discussed are methods for collecting articulatory data, including X-ray Microbeam, EMA (Electromagnetic Articulatograph), Video, Ultrasound, and a new method, involving a MARRYS cap. A strong focus is on articulation of rhythm: what is articulatory rhythm? How do languages vary in terms of rhythm articulation, and what are some possible kinesthetic approaches to teaching rhythm? This chapter is divided into the following sections: (1) introduction to prosody and rhythm; (2) articulation of rhythm and prominence levels in English; (3) articulatory prosody: an approach to modeling;(4) articulation of rhythm in other languages; (5) teaching rhythm to second language learners; (6) language rhythm and nested neural oscillations; (7) final comments; and (8) synopsis. The chapter is based on a mini-course offered through the Brazilian Federal University systems, Luso-Brazilian Association of Speech Sciences (LBASS) from March 16-26, 2021, thanks very much to Professor Tommaso Raso. Note that the chapter is not intended to completely cover everything about prosody, rather to introduce some concepts that may lead to some new insights, ideas, and questions in this field.