Suprasegmental Features Giving priority to suprasegmental features is a good choice on your part because; 1. Research shows that they (intonation, stress, pausing, etc.) have greater impact on intelligibility than individual sounds. This means that native speakers can understand you better when your intonation and stress are correct and you mispronounce some sounds than when your intonation and stress are incorrect but you say the sounds correctly. If you mispronounce a sound, the meaning can be inferred from the context. However, this is not so easy if you make a mistake in the prosodic features. People cannot infer from the context if prosodic mistakes are made. Watch the following video illustrating the difference in meaning between rising and falling intonation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29g6sQOAH90. 2. Prosodic features communicate attitude and intentions. It would be wise to learn how to communicate intentions and feeling through your tone of voice. You want to make sure you are not communicating feelings or attitude that you do not want to and cause native speakers to misinterpret you. The following video is an example of how intonation conveys attitude and meaning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoFNoLW1XCg Some prosodic features; •
Stress •
Rhythm •
Intonation •
Linking •
Pausing Stress Stress refers to when syllables sound louder, longer and higher in pitch. Words with two or more syllables have one syllable that is stressed as in ‘TAble’. Some longer words may have two syllables that are stressed, in which one is lightly stressed as in CLAUstroPHObia (CLAU is the secondary stress and PHO is the primary stress). Sentences have stressed and unstressed words with one main stress as in: LINda could have DRIVen TImothy’s CAR. To learn and practice stress you can do the following activities. Type 1 activities (Analysis): a) To learn how to stress words, you could find words that you already know in the dictionary to see where they are stressed. b) Also, you could find out some basic rules of word stress that will help you identify how to stress words you don’t know. For example; Prefixes are generally not stressed. You should stress the first syllable of the root: unDO, outDO, overLOOK, underSTAND, diSCUSS, proCLAIM, exIST, etc. c) For sentence stress you can find out what words tend to be stressed in a sentence, for example, content words vs. function words. Content words are nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. Function words are prepositions, pronouns, articles, etc. Content words tend to be stressed where as function words tend to be unstressed. There are exceptions, however, where function words can be stressed to show emphasis or contrast. For example: that’s my book, not yours. Type 2 activities (Listening discrimination): a) You can use the online dictionary to listen to the pronunciation of words. b) To practice listening for sentence stress, you can use Rachel’s English and Randall’s ESL Lab and other sites. In the first site, you will find explanations about both word and sentence stress. With both sites you will have a lot of opportunities to listen and identify stress. You can underline the syllables that are stressed. c) To practice identifying words that should carry stress, you can use a poem for instance and predict the words that will be stressed. Then you can practice reading it to a native speaker to check for correct stress pattern. d) A fun activity to identify stress and rhythm could be to listen to songs and mark stress. You can either underline the stressed syllable or put an apostrophe where the syllable starts. Type 3 activities (Controlled practice): a) You can do these activities simultaneously with type 2 activities. As you listen to the pronunciation of words from the dictionary, you can repeat after playing the sound. b) You can repeat as you listen to the videos and conversations in the website. c) Practice reading poems, jazz chants, etc. Dr. Seuss books are very useful and entertaining to practice stress. As you try to read emphasizing stressed words you can clap on each stressed syllable. d) Sing to a song you have previously identified stress for. Type 4/5 activities (Guided/Communicative practice): a) You can plan to practice specific phrases and words and use them in conversations with friends and native speakers. You may want to move from using prompts such as cards or notes to guide your practice to having a conversation without those aids. Rhythm Rhythm in English is stress‐timed. This means that the time it takes to say a group of sounds from one stress to the other should be the same independently of how many syllables you have. For example, LYNN USED TIM’S CAR. In that sentence, there are 4 syllables and all of them are stressed. To say the sentence it takes 4 beats. LINda could have DRIVen THImothy’s CAR. In this sentence, there are 10 syllables of which only 4 are stressed. To say the sentence, it should also take 4 beats, and the time it takes to go from LIN to DRIV should be the same as the time to go from DRIV to THI. Note that there are 3 syllables between LIN to DRIV, but only 1 syllable to go from DRIV to THI. That means that the 3 syllables between LIN to DRIV should be said pretty fast so as to keep the rhythm. Also, as you say a certain number of syllables faster to keep the stress‐timed rhythm of English, you will have to shorten some words. For example, to say: LINda could have DRIVen THImothy’s CAR, you wont say /kʊd hæv/, you will say / kʊdəv/. You will delete the /h/ sound and reduce the /æ/ vowel to /ə/ which is shorter and weaker. To practice rhythm, you can use the activities you prepare for sentence stress. You just need to make sure the time it takes you to go from one stressed syllable to the other is the same. One of the activities you can do is to practice reading poems or books and clap when you hit a stressed syllable. Make sure you keep the rhythm. Intonation Intonation is the movement of the pitch of your voice. Intonation conveys meaning as in a declarative sentence that is used as a question (e.g. He is going to France?). It also shows attitude of the speaker towards what is being said. Intonation can express surprise, shock, disbelief, disappointment, happiness, etc. The most common pattern of intonation is falling, which is used for: •
statements •
commands •
Wh‐questions Rising intonation is used for: •
yes‐no questions (e.g. Are you ok?) •
some tag questions (e.g. Today we have the writing test, don’t we? ‐ seeking for an actual answer) •
declarative sentences that function as questions (e.g. She is studying engineering?) •
echo questions (e.g. He bought what?) •
a partial repetition of an sentence (e.g. …an accident?) •
etc. To convey different emotions you will use: •
Surprise, excitement, and happiness: High pitch, either falling (e.g. He won the lottery!) or rising (e.g. He won the lottery?) •
Disinterest, boredom, and tiredness: low pitch and monotone Activities: •
To find out the different intonation patterns used in English and practice them you can use Rachel’s English videos. •
Also, you can take advantage of the media, such as TV shows, the news and other programs to identify and learn more intonation patterns conveying intentions and attitudes.