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intonation
A top-down look at English
Starting from the top
• Fluency, rhythm and intonation: the overall
structures of language sound
• Does it make sense to start by focusing on these
large structures rather than on individual
sounds?
– We are probably more used to thinking bottom-up,
particularly concerning sounds
– The overall structures obviously depend on the
smaller units: it is difficult to become fluent without
knowing how to pronounce the individual sounds
• However, communicative language
teaching means that we want to present
the pupils with texts that have meaning to
them from the very beginning (such as
songs and rhymes)
• This means that rhythm, intonation and
fluency are factors that in the teaching we
do will be there from the beginning
Starting from the top
• Pronunciation is in many ways the one area where we
are most dependent on thinking wholeness from the very
beginning
– Working with vocabulary, we will usually have a gradual and (to
some extent) controlled introduction of new words
– Working with grammar, starting with a few simple structures and
then introducing more and more complicated ones is at least an
option
– Controlling the teaching material on pronunciation criteria (using
only words with sounds which has been specifically taught) is
hardly an option
– We must often let the children start with the tools they already
have (their Norwegian sound system), and adjust it gradually
– As a counterweight to this, it is useful to have them listen to and
think about what English spoken language sounds like overall (in
manageable chunks) from the very beginning
Starting from the top
• Children who learn their first language start
mimicking the sound of connected speech, often
before they can make meaningful words or the
language sounds are firmly established
• This also means that they have to relate to quite
complicated sound patterns from the beginning
• In foreign language teaching, this should be an
opportunity, not a problem: most children enjoy
playing with sounds
• We need to work with pronunciation from the top
down and from the bottom up simultaneously
The structure of the workshop
1. Fluency
2. Stress and rhythm
3. Intonation
I will at times put in bits of text written in
phonemic symbols: you do not have to read
these to follow my points, so this is primarily
meant to make you used to seeing them…
Fluency
• Fluency in pronunciation is about the ability to
speak at a suitable speed without too much
hesitation and false starts
• In this sense all skills in (oral) language get
together in fluency: pronunciation of individual
sounds, vocabulary, grammar, rhythm,
intonation
• BUT: we cannot wait until everything else is in
place before we start focusing on fluency
• It must be in focus from the beginning
Fluency
• This means we have to find a balance
between accuracy training and fluency
training
• Accuracy training is necessary for fluency
in the long run, but may hinder it in the
short run
Fluency
• Fluency training – training which focuses
on producing connected speech at natural
speed
• Part of this must be focused on unplanned
communication – conversation training
• However, training rhythm and intonation
are also central elements in fluency
training
Stress
• In speech, some syllables will be
pronounced with greater force – they are
stressed:
Tension
Per’form
• If you look in a dictionary, the vertical line
which marks stress is placed before the
first phoneme
• We can look at stress in two ways:
– Word stress
– Sentence stress
Word stress
• Where does the stress go in a word
spoken in isolation (word stress)
• In relation to natural speech, word stress
tells us where the stress may come, but it
does not have to come anywhere in the
word: not every word is stressed in natural
speech.
Sentence stress
• Sentence stress: the syllables in an actual,
spoken sentence which receive stress.
• Syllables that receive stress when a word is
pronounced in isolation will often lose it in
connected speech
– our
– If you think our ‘car’s dirty, you ought to see our
‘house.
More on word stress
• Getting word stress right is important in order for
our words to be understood by the listener
• Stress on the wrong syllable is more likely to
cause misunderstanding than the use of a wrong
sound
• In two-syllable words, stress is normally on the
first syllable.
• In words of Three or more syllables, stress tends
to come on the second- or third last syllable
Where would you put the stress in
the following words?
• Participation Claustrophobia
• Neutrality Potential
• Philosopher Necessity
• Inform Intonation
• Dialect Horseradish
• Outgun Uncool
Sentence Stress
• While word stress is simply a part of the
pronunciation of a word, sentence stress is
connected to the meaning we want to express.
• In connected speech only the words most
important to the content of the sentence will
receive stress.
– These tend to be the content words or lexical words:
nouns, verbs (not auxiliaries), adjectives, adverbs.
– The other words are known as form words or
grammatical words: auxiliaries, articles,
prepositions, conjunctions etc., will normally be
unstressed in a sentence.
• The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
are very important in English (think poetry):
• English is fundamentally stress-timed, not
syllable timed.
• The length it takes to pronounce a sentence
depends on the number of stressed
syllables, not the total number of syllables.
• This is the same in Norwegian, but remember:
some of our students may have a background
from a language which is fundamentally
different: where all syllables are the same length
– In’variably ‘rude (5 syllables)
– ‘Very ‘rude (3 syllables)
– I have ‘heard your ‘excuses (7 syllables)
– I won’t ‘listen to any more of your silly ‘excuses (15
syllables)
• The two phrases in these pairs should take
approximately the same time
• The unstressed syllables are pronounced very
quickly, and therefore tend to be reduced
Your tools for teaching rhythm
• Probably your most important tool is your
own pronunciation: make sure that you
use rhythm and weak forms appropriately
• However, there are many types of
exercises which are appropriate for this
purpose, e.g.
– Rhymes, poems, songs
– Growing sentences
– Forward- and back-chaining
Nursery rhymes/children’s rhymes
• Clear rhythmic pattern
• Rhymed lines – easy to remember
• Often used as part of skipping games – further
emphasis on rhythm
• May help the speaker achieve a natural
speaking speed, which also makes it more
natural to get the weak forms right
– Of course, the rhythm in such verses tends to be
exaggerated, but this exaggeration is likely to be
automatically evened out in real speech
Childrens rhymes
Georgie Porgie pudding and pie
Kissed the girls and made them cry
When the boys came out to play
Georgie Porgie ran away!
(Note how the number of syllables in
”pudding and” forces each syllable to be
shortened)
Older children
• When the children become too big for traditional nursery
rhymes, there are other types of rhythmic poetry that can
be used – or there are of course twists on (or twisted
versions of) the rhymes they already know (if you want to
subject children to such brutality):
• Mary had a little lamb
Tommy had a pup
Alfonzo had a crocodile
That ate the others up
• Mary had a little lamb
You've heard this tale before
But did you know she passed her plate
And had a little more
Limericks
• Again, the clear rhythm makes these a useful tool.
There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger
Here the strict form also means that students can produce these
themselves
Growing Sentences
• A sentence begins with the most important content words, and id
then expanded, mainly with function words. The number of stresses,
and therefore the time it takes, remains unchanged, and the added
words are likely to be unstressed; many of them weak forms.
• Priscilla
• Priscilla played
• Priscilla played the lead role
• Priscilla played the lead role in an amateur production
• Priscilla played the lead role in an amateur production of “Twelfth
Night”.
• Priscilla played the lead role in an amateur production of “Twelfth
Night” which was an enormous success.
Back-chaining