Perfect Your Pronunciation
Seminars on Language and Intercultural Teaching
May 30, 2008
Content
Detecting Communication Breakdown
- Fork Handles from The Two Ronnies
- Rough transcript
- Your meltdowns and difficulties
- Some Estonian-specific pronunciation pickles
Word Stress
- What is it? Highlighting, emphasizing
- Why is it important? Tells listener which information is important; avoid misinformation
- When? You decide! Usually words that provide information – nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Especially at the end of sentences… your listeners may not be able to grasp your speech fully if you drift off at the end.
- Beware of stressing little words that carry less important information such as
articles (a, an, the), prepositions (in, at), and pronouns (she, he, it). You may
misinform listeners about key information if you stress these little words.
- Can differentiate between identical noun and verb forms: present/present, export/export, object/object
- How? Increase volume, length of syllable
Intonation
- What is it? The rise and fall of pitch in our voice
- Why? English usually uses mid-level pitch. When we use rising intonation, we highlight a word in the speech flow. Falling intonation often indicates the end of a thought or word grouping.
- When? Often (but not always) at the end of a phrase or word group when we slow down or come to a full stop. Questions, imperatives, and requests also have falling tone.
- How? Varying between low, mid, and high level pitches (see examples).
Rhythm & Phrasal Stress
- Practice with Sand and Sun, for the High-Minded by Sloane Crosley, May 26, 2008 on National Public Radio
Noun Phrases and Intonation Patterns
Unstressed Words & Syllables
- What happens in condensed speech?
- Stress the content words but not the less important ones, such as it, is, a the, at, in, on, of.
English is Tough Stuff
Resources
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