Types of Intonation in Questions

Good day, Class! Again, I am teacher Kristine your teacher for today. As I have noticed in our
class yesterday some of you are confused in answering questions because of the intonation. Now
before we go to our next lesson, I’ll give you a brief activity. Are you excited?
Before moving on our activity, Intonation is about how we say things. Our voice can rise and fall
during our speech depending on the meaning we want to convey to the listener. Therefore, we can
divide intonation into two patterns as rising and falling intonation.

Rising intonation is when the pitch and tone of your voice rise at the end of the words or sentences,
whereas falling intonation is when they go down.
Let’s study some example sentences and decide which intonation type they have.

 Do you wanna go to the gym?

 How was the gym?

Could you catch the difference at the end of the sentences? When you uttered the first sentence, the
intonation went up at the end of the question. However, when you read the second sentence, the
intonation went down. Can you guess why?
That’s because, when we ask YES/NO questions (questions that you can answer with yes or no) in
English, your intonation should go up at the end of the question. Yet, when you ask an open-ended
question (questions that have longer answers instead of saying yes or no), your intonation falls at the
end.

Great! Now, it’s time for practicing with other examples:

 Do you wanna go out for dinner? (rising )

 Where do you wanna go for dinner? (falling)

Could you differentiate the rising and falling intonations in these sentences? The more you say them out
loud, the better you can understand the difference. Here is another one:

 Are you busy this weekend? (rising )

 Is it cold outside? (falling)