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PPTX

This document discusses aspects of phonology such as stress, rhythm, and intonation in language. It provides exercises and techniques for raising awareness of these important linguistic features. Learners may find highlighting stress, rhythm, and intonation through activities like tapping, drilling, and marking stress on words both challenging and beneficial to developing their pronunciation skills. Mastering these phonological elements is important for clear communication but can be difficult for learners from languages with different prosodic systems.

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Julie Lhnr
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81 views

PPTX

This document discusses aspects of phonology such as stress, rhythm, and intonation in language. It provides exercises and techniques for raising awareness of these important linguistic features. Learners may find highlighting stress, rhythm, and intonation through activities like tapping, drilling, and marking stress on words both challenging and beneficial to developing their pronunciation skills. Mastering these phonological elements is important for clear communication but can be difficult for learners from languages with different prosodic systems.

Uploaded by

Julie Lhnr
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Phonology: Stress, rhythm and

intonation
Raising awareness of important
aspects of language
Warm-up
• In pairs practise both conversations.
• NB Meaning is totally conveyed by these
words only. Get your acting hats on!
• Do you think learners would find this activity
easy or difficult?
• Most attitudinal features of stress are
universal. Depends how uninhibited the
learners are, though.
Stress
• Read these invented words and try to predict
the way each one is stressed. Count the
syllables first. Can you suggest any rules?
• pawler veddle malmish pandifulloomitive
loomition imbelist imbelistic geon
geonics geonetics geonetology
geonetological
Some general tendencies
• In two-syllable words the stress tends to be on the
first syllable, especially where the second syllable is
a suffix (pawler, veddish, malmer).
• Polysyllabic words tend to be stressed on the third
to last: pandiful, loomitive, imbelist, cosmopolitan.
• However, certain suffixes such as –ic, ition, sort of
‘attract’ the stress: loomition, imbelistic.
• This accounts for stress shift in word families: geon,
geonics, photograph, photographic, photography??
Techniques to highlight word stress
• Provide a model, i.e., drill chorally and
individually.
• Ask learners, where’s the stress?
• Tap or hum the pattern.
• Write the word on the board with a small
indicator of stress, e.g., a small box above the
stressed syllable.
Word stress Practice
• Mark the stress on these words. It helps to
count syllables first.
• Table happy decide overtired notebook
sociablehappily organise exercise
independently
Stress
• Read the short dialogues aloud then answer the questions.

• A: Let’s invite Jack to dinner next Saturday.


• B: No, let’s invite Jack next Friday.

• A: Let’s invite Jack to dinner next Saturday.


• B: Let’s invite Jill to dinner next Saturday.

• A: Let’s invite Jack to dinner next Saturday.


• B: Let’s invite Jack to lunch next Saturday.

• A: Let’s invite Jack to dinner next Saturday.


• B: No, let’s not invite Jack to dinner next Saturday.
Questions
• 1. In what way does the second sentence change?
• 2. Why does the sentence change in this way?
• The sentence stress shifts according to the speaker’s
assessment of what the listener needs to focus on.
Sentence stress (unlike word stress) is variable.
• General rule new information is stressed in English.
Quite a difficult skill since in many languages new
information is signified through word order, for
example.
Rhythm
• Take it in turns to read the sentences given to you.
• There are 3 mains beats. Even the final one has 3 main
beats. So, in English they take more or less the same
time (give or take a microsecond!).
• Tap out the 3 beats on the table as you say the
sentences.
• What happens the individual words (especially the ones
between the beats) as the sentences become longer.
• Why might this be a problem for learners both with
listening and speaking?
Rhythm
• What happens the individual words (especially the ones between
the beats) as the sentences become longer?
• Why might this be a problem for learners both with listening and
speaking?
• The individual words are accommodated by contractions and weak
forms.
• The ‘squeezing’ and ‘swallowing’ of the low-information words
are sometimes difficult for learners to actually hear at all.
• Failure to use weak forms and contractions makes their own
spoken language sound stilted. Failure to stress the high-
information words can make it difficult for listeners to ‘unpack’
what they what to say.
Intonation
• Intonation is also used to ‘package’ meaning.
• This is simply an awareness raising task. Listen
to me say each sentence and then decide
what the difference in meaning is between
each.
• You could, if you like, use a little arrow ( ) to
decide where intonation is falling or rising.

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