Unit 13

UNIT 13 WORKSHEET

Task 1 – Why is the teaching of pronunciation important, but often neglected by teachers?

            Pronunciation is often neglected because the English teacher sometimes lacks the confidence and/or the training to teach it methodically. Applied phonetics seems an alien, abstract subject to the adult trainee teacher. Also, many native English speakers find it difficult to hear certain features, such as the fall or rise of speech. The teacher thinks that if he/she cannot detect it, then the students will not be able to either. Additionally, pronunciation varies so much that it seems impossible to standardize anything. Sometimes, the instructor knows it instinctively but has a difficult time explaining it.

            Despite its difficulty to teach, pronunciation is an integral part of English that should be incorporated in every class. Students are as concerned about it as they are with any other aspect of learning English. Also, skilled pronunciation teaching adds more depth and life to a class because it reflects feelings and personal reactions to different situation. It gives variety to repetition drills or dialogues, which keeps the class diverse and entertaining.

Task 2 – State, with a brief description, techniques that can be used to indicate intonation and stress:

1) Nonsense word: Just pure noises can be used to practice conveying attitude and pointing out intonation. Ask the students to utter a nonsense sentence, telling them what attitude you want them to convey. Later, you can change it into uttering real sentences.

2) Humming or singing: Singing or humming sentences out loud to hear the stress and intonation is a great method as well. The students don’t even have to produce actual words.

3) Gesture: A clear sweep of the hand either up or down can indicate intonation. It demonstrates whether the sentences starts on a high or low pitch and then indicates the direction of the pitch. To indicate stress by gesturing, you can click fingers, clap, or make any other sound when there is a stress.

4) Board: Making marks on the boards using straight or angled arrows to emphasize the point being made and the direction of the intonation. In addition, underlining or drawing boxes can be used to indicate stress sin a sentence.

5) Stress mark: These are another way to indicate stress. For example, He ‘wanted to ‘go.

6) Choral work: Chanting or singing typical rhythms of English can help indicate stress.

7) Contrastive stress: Stress on a syllable can be shown by saying it correctly first and then repeating the word with the stress in a different syllable. It will help the students because a student can more readily perceive a sound that is voiced by placing it alongside a sound that is non-voiced.

Task 3 – For each of these sentences, give the meanings indicated by the

            i) rise/fall intonation pattern

            ii) fall/rise intonation pattern

a) I’m going to tell you a story.

            i) The speaker might have been speaking for a long time and will save this important story for later perhaps.

            ii) The speaker is not finished with the conversation and will continue with a story. It indicates the listener should pay attention.

b) She’s not going out tonight, is she?

            i) The speaker is curious and is just asking.

            ii) The speaker is surprised, maybe even concerned, about her going out. The speaker wants confirmation.

c) I don’t understand.

            i) The speaker might be listening to someone explain something and ends the conservation still not understanding. However, the speaker does not want further clarification.

            ii) The speaker does not truly understand something and needs further clarification.

d) Goodnight!

            i) The speaker wants to end the conservation by bidding a goodnight.

            ii) The speaker wants a reply in return.

Task 4 – Say each of the following sentences and then underline the stressed syllables in each:

a) I know why he wanted to see you.

b) What’s the time?

c) Don’t forget to turn out the light!

d) It’s another beautiful day today.

Say each of the following sentences and then underline the unstressed syllables in each:

a) Once upon a time, there was an old woman…

b) In the light of the above statement, I shall abstain from voting.

c) Good morning. How can I help you?

d) I’m away for the rest of the week.

Task 5 – Make up a sentence similar to that in the example on page 8 of the unit, and explain its various possible meanings, when different words in it are stressed:

She didn’t return that book yesterday.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – Someone else did it for her.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – The speaker is contradicting somebody who thinks she did it.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – She might have done something else with it.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – She returned another book instead.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – She returned something else, such as a video.

She didn’t return that book yesterday. – She returned the book another day.

 Task 6 – How and why can a student’s pronunciation affect the quality of his/her communication?

            The whole point of any language is to communicate ideas and emotions. If the pronunciation is incomprehensible, the listener cannot grasp what the speaker is trying to say.  This defeats the purpose of communicating. Pronunciation can affect the meaning as well. Listeners may hear something entirely different, and this could lead to disastrous results. They might be accidently offended.

            Written English differs from spoken English. Most students are more interested in learning to speak English than any other aspect. In order to learn how to speak English, the pronunciation must be understandable and reproducible. Also, the first impression listeners get from us in our speech is the pronunciation. They can tell automatically if we have an accent or not.

Task 7 – Indicate the major ways in which English sounds are joined and linked. Give your own examples:

1) Linking: Banana and apples become bananand apples

2) Sound dropping (t, d): next week becomes nex week

3) Sound changing: green tea becomes greem tea

4) Extra lettering: so on becomes sow on

Task 8 – What are the benefits in students learning the phonemic alphabet?

Spelling of words and their pronunciation often differs in the English language, which makes it hard for foreign students to learn the correct pronunciation. However, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a universal system of one set of phonetic symbols for English.  Since the IPA is included in every dictionary, students can use the dictionary to sound out any English word, using the phonemic alphabet. They just have to find the symbol that produces each individual sound and put them together to form the phonetic spelling. Because the fundamental principles of the IPA are simple and easy to use, everyone can apply the IPA to transcribe sounds when learning a foreign language.

Task 9 – Referring to the phonemic alphabet, transcribe the phonemic text at the end of the course unit into standard script:

Translate this into normal script

Gary: What’s the matter, Pete?

Pete: My arm hurts really bad.

Gary: Why? What have you been doing?

Pete: I’ve been playing too much golf.

Gary: Have you seen a doctor about it?

Pete: No way. I haven’t had time yet. Do you think I should?

Gary: I would if I were you before it drops off.

Pete: Thanks for your advice.

Gary: No problem, mate, any time.

Pete: Catch you later!

Gary: See you!