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Teaching English Intonation and Stress Patterns
Teaching English Intonation and Stress Patterns
Teaching English Intonation and Stress Patterns
the study of sounds within a language system. All spoken and written
languages are systems.
To deny learners rehearsal in the recognition and production of English
phonemes and syntactic forms in the name of some theory of Communicative
Language Teaching dependent on "authentic materials" is absolute madness and
has nothing to do with teaching communication. It also portrays a mistaken
notion of authenticity. Nearly all speeches and texts that can be found in the
world are produced with some purpose in mind. There is nothing culpable about
creating written or spoken material designed especially to help people learn
English. If material developed to practise phonology &/or syntax completely
ignores function, attitude and meaning, then it is probably not very good
material. Authenticity is not an issue. Texts or dialogues tailored to the
phonology or grammar problems of learners from specific language backgrounds
can be perfectly authentic as teaching material. Why choose texts designed
to help or appeal to people with needs and interests which bear no relevance to
learners' problems and goals?
Intonation has various functions in different world languages
On this page, we have been concerned with the functions of intonation in spoken
English. In world languages, intonation is used to mark:
1. gender
2. number
3. quantity
4. tense or time
5. modality
6. pace (in some languages)
7. word order
8. punctuation and
9. boundary features
Teaching English rhythm and stress patterns - use of weak forms, stress
placement & timing
As movement of pitch is heard on stressed syllables in the English language,
practice of English intonation and stress patterns are closely linked. However, it
can be beneficial to focus specifically on word and sentence stress. A
Pronouncing Dictionary is recommended as a reference source to check where
syllable stress occurs within words. Practising placement of stress within
sentences is also essential if learners are to become good listeners and
communicators, since the same sentence can take on different meanings
depending on where the speaker chooses to place the primary stress:
EXAMPLE SENTENCE [A]: "I'm not going".
1. "I'm not going": meaning [1] = Not "ME", but perhaps "YOU", "SHE" or
"HE".
2. "I'm not going": meaning [2] = I reFUSE to go.
3. "I'm not going": meaning [3] = I'm not GOing... I'm COMing BACK!
Sentence stress can also be illustrated and practised by writing a long sentence
on the board, which can be made to carry many different meanings or points of
emphasis.
EXAMPLE SENTENCE [B]: "Janet's going to Brighton tomorrow afternoon to buy
herself a pair of red, leather shoes."
Practice of sentence stress is achieved by cueing the learners with questions
while requiring them to use the whole sentence in reply. The second time this is
done, the learners can discard the parts of the sentence which do not contain the
important element of the answer in order to form a more natural response.
The teacher provides cues such as: "Is John going to Brighton...?", "Is Janet going
to London..?", "Is Janet going away from Brighton...?", "Is Janet coming from
Brighton...? Is Janet going to sell her mother a pair of red, leather shoes?", "Is
Janet going to buy herself three pairs...?" "Is Janet going to buy herself a pair of
blue, suede shoes / red, leather sandels?"
It will become clear to learners that there are many variations of sentence stress,
which will decide the meaning of their responses.
A practice session on stress could also be included in a lesson aimed at
improving listening comprehension. Learners who listen to utterances in a linear
way, giving equal importance to each word in sequence, are exhibiting very poor
listening strategies. Learners who do this are usually the ones who complain that
it is too fast and ask for sluggishly slow colloquial. What they are missing is the
fact that in the English language, the words carrying the important meaning are
often located at or towards the end of an utterance or sentence. Words such as
"I" (and more difficult items than subject pronouns placed near the beginning of
sentences) are often fairly redundant in terms of meaning since they refer to
known territory: i.e. the listener already knows that it is "you" who is speaking.
Try the following technique to make your learners more relaxed about rapidly
spoken utterances:
EXAMPLE SENTENCE [C]: "I don't know whether you're wondering who I am, but
may I introduce myself. I'm Tarzan."
Having deliberately recited the unimportant parts of this utterance at breakneck
speed, reassure your learners by asking them just to listen to the important
components near the end of the utterance, especially the words and syllables
carrying the main stress. Make the point that native speakers only listen out for
one or two propositions in an utterance and all that this one really communicates
is "ME...TARZAN". Learning what parts of an utterance to discard (not even to
assign to "the recycle bin") is a very important listening strategy. Native speakers
would find listening comprehension impossible if they did not know how to
process utterances in this way. It may be worth mentioning that the keys and
tunes used at the beginning of sentences can communicate attitudes i.e. they
can tell you if the speaker is angry or trying to be friendly, polite, formal or cold.
Without understanding any of the words, it is still possible to detect the speaker's
attitude.
Nonsense words (just "pure noises"!) can even be used to practise conveying
attitude. In multilingual classes, this can form the basis of an interesting
contrastive linguistics project on differences and common ground in the use of
tunes and keys to communicate feelings and attitudes. Leo Jones includes
activities of this kind in Notions of English [Cambridge]. Ask your learners to utter
a nonsense sentence such as "I love you" several times, telling them what
attitude [e.g. warmth, indifference, pride, hostility, boredom, interest] you wish
them to communicate on each occasion. Fame Academy teachers try to get
learners to sing with expression. The challenge for language teachers is to get
learners to speak with expression.
Phonology, stress patterns and tunes are all interrelated. To achieve the correct
rhythm, it is necessary to know when to use weak forms [this frequently involves
the neutral vowel "schwa"], which is under-deployed by many second language
learners. Learners whose native languages have many consonant sounds, but
relatively few vowel sounds, especially long vowels and diphthongs [e.g. native
speakers of Arabic languages and dialects], are likely to have poor stress timing
and to make insufficient use of pitch variation (i.e. intonation).
Good material to practise expression (i.e. rhythm, stress and intonation) includes
situational-based texts designed for role play where utterances are short (but
dramatic!). Some of the best role play texts I have used were provided by Doug
Case and Ken Wilson and the English Language Teaching Theatre. The two best
titles were: Off Stage 1979 Heinemann [15 sketches + accompanying audiocassette] and Further Off Stage 1984 [10 sketches + accompanying audio &/or
video cassette]. Unfortunately, these materials are no longer in print. Ken Wilson
is also remembered for his key participation in the Solid British Hat Band, which
produced Mister Monday & other songs for the teaching of English [Longman
1973].
Listening practice can also take the form of discrimination exercises where the
same utterance is recited using different sentence stress patterns. The learners
do not even have to see the sentence written down, but it is helpful if they have
an Answer Grid where they have to choose between three possible meanings for
each utterance: meaning [A], [B] or [C]. The same utterance can be used in
successive discrimination test questions applying different stress patterns until
each of the alternative meanings [A] [B] and [C] have been exhausted, though
the learner will need to mark their answers in the correct sequence. Thus, seven
different utterances, each presented three times, would require a ready-made
Answer Grid offering twenty-one different meanings.
The best published material I have used of this kind was Donn Byrne and Gordon
Walsh's Listening Comprehension 1 Teacher's Book [Longman 1973] containing
sample utterances to practise phonology [Units 1-11], stress, rhythm and
intonation [Units 12-16]. The Answer Grids were contained in an accompanying
student's workbook entitled Pronunciation Practice. These materials have long
been out of print, though it is quite easy for native speakers of English to
produce their own.
Most useful exercises, still available, for practice of stress timing and placement
is Stress Time and Weak Forms contained in Colin Mortimer's Elements of English
.