This dissertation investigates the production and perception of intonation in English and Syrian Arabic (henceforth, SyrA) regarding three patterns of utterances: declaratives, questions and imperatives. It introduces the meaning of “intonation”, the different ways of producing and perceiving it by Syrian students learning English as a second language, and why this process is very essential for our communication as it expresses our attitudes and the feelings reflected in our speech.

     Two methods (tests) have been adopted to collect the data of this study: the production test and the perception test. All students who took part in this study are native SyrA male and female MA students of English and graduates of English Language and Literature at Al-Baath University because they were learning English throughout their university study.

     In the production test, participants read some English and SyrA (Homsi) utterances, and I recorded them, whereas in the perception test, participants listened to some English utterances recorded by a native English speaker, and they were asked to assign the correct pattern of intonation to each utterance.

     The findings of this study reveal that SyrA students still have some problems with English intonation as they tend to adopt Arabic intonation patterns and apply them to English utterances, especially in the case of questions because English mainly depends on word order in addition to grammatical words to form questions, while intonation is the main indication for questions in Arabic.

     Finally, this study provides a good material for researchers who are interested in comparing two languages or dialects. It also sheds light on some important cases in other Arabic dialects.