This thesis sets out to identify a series of communicatively important prosodic features for the teaching of Spanish in a Swedish context. The present work also aims to highlight both the central role played by prosody in communication and the need for this skill to be integrated in the communicative competences of second language teaching and learning. The thesis comprises a collection of five studies, three of which use an experimental approach to investigate the following: (a) differences in the realization of prosodic prominence by L2 and L1 speakers of Spanish (Study I); (b) the transfer of pragmatic strategies from L1 Swedish to L2 Spanish, manifested in the realization of rising boundary tones (Study II); and (c) the contribution of the type of L2 prosody displayed by Swedish learners to a percieved foreign accent, focusing, focusing especially on the role played by rising boundary tones and their pragmatic values (Study III). These initial studies describe some of the main prosodic characteristics of the L2 product as compared to Spanish L1, and identify prosodic features of Spanish L1 that are of importance to acquire for interactional success in the L2. Study IV highlights the fact that, despite the emphasis on a communicative approach in L2 teaching, the approach to the teaching of prosody in the Swedish curriculum and the L2 Spanish text books studied tends to be addressed as a separate skill, that is not integrated in the descriptions of the communicative competences. Study V, by combining the results of Studies I-III with those of other thematically relevant studies, proposes some main features, so-called Core Prosodic Features (CPFs), for the teaching of Spanish prosody to Swedish learners. The identification of the CPFs also enables a future evaluation of the form-focused teaching approach suggested.
