Transcript Document

OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
1.
2.
3.
The different types of suprasegmentals
How suprasegmentals affect comprehension
How to teach suprasegmentals
You will be able to:
1.
Integrate suprasegmentals into your teaching of
pronunciation
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
SUPRASEGMENTALS
•
Suprasegmentals are key to our ability to express ourselves
accurately and to be understood by others. To illustrate, an
utterance like ‘Your hair is lovely’ can be said in a bored
manner, earnestly, sarcastically and many other ways
depending on how stress, intonation, and voice quality are
used. In other words, the same utterances can mean different
things depending on the application of suprasegmentals.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
•
Suprasegmentals are the prosodic properties of sounds.
•
Prosody communicates a lot of information about the speaker
and about the message; it actually communicates more
information than the words the speaker uses.
•
Prosody can tell the listener: the emotional state of the
speaker; whether the utterance is a statement, question, or
command; the presence of irony or sarcasm; the use of
emphasis, contrast, and focus.
•
This information is communicated through pitch, loudness and
length.
Prosody means the rhythm, stress and intonation of an
utterance; in other words how an utterance would sound if
you were to take out all of the words and just hum it.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
PITCH
•
Speakers have the ability to control their level of pitch. This is
done by manipulating the tension of the vocal folds and
controlling the amount of air that passes through the glottis.
•
Greater tension and air pressure results in higher voice pitch,
while less tension and air pressure results in lower voice pitch.
Humans use two types of pitch movements, tone and
intonation.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Some languages are known as tone languages. That is, word
meaning is signaled by differences in pitch.
•
For example, in Mandarin, the form ma /ma/ with a falling
pitch means ‘scold’, but the same form with a rising pitch
means ‘hemp’.
•
In non-tone languages like English, when a speakers says ‘a
car?’ with a rising pitch or with a falling pitch, the word ‘car’
maintains its meaning. In tone languages, however, that
change in pitch would also change the meaning of the word.
Tone languages are found throughout North and South
America, Subsaharan Africa and the Far East.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
•
Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a speaker’s voice.
•
Normal conversations typically occur between middle and high
pitch and low pitch is used to signal the end of an utterance.
Consider the word ‘now’. Say it with a rising pitch contour and
it becomes a question; say it with a falling pitch contour and
it becomes a command.
•
The fundamental meaning of the word is unchanged, but the
pattern tells us something about the discourse context.
For English, we can divide pitch into four levels; 4 is extra
high, 3 is high, 2 is middle, and 1 is low.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Pitch movements which are unrelated to word meaning are
referred to as intonation. Intonation is the rising and falling
of the voice to various pitch levels during an utterance. The
sentence ‘Fred parked the car.’ spoken with a falling pitch at
the end signals that the action is complete. Falling pitch at
the end of an utterance is called terminal intonation
contour.
•
In contrast, rising or level intonation can signal
incompleteness. We use this type of intonation when we are
giving lists and telephone numbers to signal to the hearer that
we are not done speaking yet. Say ‘Sally, Fred, Helen and
Joe’. Our intonation rises until we utter the last word in the
list. This type of intonation is called non-terminal intonation
contour.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
In questions, rising intonation is also used to signal
incompleteness. We use this intonation pattern to indicate
that our conversation is not finished yet. Rising intonation
typically occurs in yes/no questions. Consider the question
‘Did you have a nice time?’
•
English sentences that contain question words such as ‘who’,
‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’, do not usually employ rising
intonations. The question words themselves seem to be
enough to indicate that a response is required. Say, ‘What did
you buy?’
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
1. INTONATION
Write three possible intonations for the following sentences or
questions. Explain the meaning that each intonation gives the
sentence or question.
A. I am going to take a camel ride in the desert.
B. I thought I told you to stay here.
C. What do you think?
D. No.
E. He left already.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
LOUDNESS
•
Loudness is an obvious way to convey meaning over and above
our word choice.
•
By increasing the volume of what we say we can convey anger,
frustration, happiness or any range of strong emotions.
•
By decreasing the volume of what we say we can convey
nervousness, reserve or tiredness.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
LENGTH
•
Languages around the world contain vowels and consonants
which take relatively longer to produce than others. This
phenomenon is known as length.
•
Length is indicated by a colon /:/ placed after the sound
segment.
•
We can also deliberately lengthen or shorten an utterance in
order to change the message we want to convey. If we
lengthen a word, for example, we place emphasis on it; if we
shorten it, we take emphasis away from it.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
WORD STRESS AND SENTENCE STRESS
•
The term stress encompasses the combined effects of pitch,
loudness and length. Notice the stress changes when you say ‘an
export’ versus to ‘export’. Students benefit from this kind of
knowledge about word and sentence stress. This kind of
information will help students avoid communication breakdowns.
•
Word Stress refers to vowels or syllables which are perceived as
more prominent than others within a word. Three levels of word
stress are commonly recognized. They are: strongly stressed, lightly
stressed, and unstressed syllables. The three levels of stress are
otherwise known as primary stress, secondary stress, and tertiary
stress. The three levels of stress are marked in IPA with diacritics.
/΄/ is used before the syllable to indicate strongly stressed syllables,
/ͅ / is used before the syllable to indicate lightly stressed syllables,
and unstressed syllables are not marked.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Word stress may be difficult for language learners to master
because English vocabulary items stem from a variety of roots
and the words sometimes maintain the stress patterns of their
place of derivation. Most often, however, words which have
been adopted by the English language are assigned the
common Germanic stress pattern which involves moving the
stress to an earlier syllable.
•
Consider the French word ‘grammaire’ and its English
counterpart ‘grammar’.
•
Sentence stress refers to the stressed elements of a
sentence. Sentence stress in English follows a regular rhythmic
beat therefore English is a stress-timed language. This means
that the length of an utterance depends on the number of
stresses in that utterance, not on the number of syllables it
contains as in Spanish and Japanese.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
2. WORD AND SENTENCE STRESS
Correct the student errors with word and sentence stress and write
what you would say to them to explain their error.
A. I am participating in a contest (stress on second syllable) this
weekend.
B. He did it himself (stress on first syllable).
C. I’ll see you tomorrow (stress on every syllable).
D. I’ll see you next week (with rising intonation).
E. Where’s the class (with rising intonation)?
F. Do you know where the class is (with falling intonation)?
G. It’s nice to meet you (each syllable pronounced equally).
H. It’s a pretty (producing /t/ twice) doll.
I. I finished (long pause here) my homework and watch TV.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
3. EXPRESSING EMOTION CORRECTLY USING SUPRASEGMENTALS
Describe in detail how specific suprasegmentals could be used to
express the following emotions, when saying the sentence “It’s cold
outside”:
A. Happiness
B. Anger
C. Frustration
D. Sadness
E. Exhaustion
F. Fear
G. Excitement
H. Nervousness
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
TEACHING SUPRASEGMENTALS
•
There are a variety of techniques that can be used to teach
suprasegmentals. Teachers can use chants, nursery rhymes,
and poetry to expose students to clear suprasegmental
patterns. Some teachers enjoy using chants in the classroom
because they are highly memorable and motivational. It is
important to note that chants are successful learning tools
only if the teacher displays and transmits enthusiasm for
them.
•
Students can listen to the teacher or a recording, produce
utterances then attempt to approximate what they hear.
•
Teachers should also provide feedback and instruction as
required.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
Teachers can explain intonation and stress patterns to the students and
illustrate the patterns with charts. Alternatively, teachers can set the
students up to discover the patterns on their own through careful
examination of audio and visual examples. Students can also
participate in exercises where they listen to a sentence and circle the
correct answer. An example of an exercise aimed at improving stress is
below.
1. I’ve always wanted a
a. GREEN HOUSE (a house painted green)
b. GREEN HOUSE (a glass house for plants)
2. My brother is a successful
a. HEAD DOCTOR (a chief of staff)
b. HEAD DOCTOR (psychiatrist)
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
Well thought out dialogues and role plays are also helpful.
Teachers can provide students with a model of a dialogue with
stress indicated.
The model below indicates three levels of stress.
Then, the teacher can give each student a different profession
and have them mingle to find out what their peers’ assigned
professions are by following the model.
A: WHAT do you DO?
B: I’m a DOCtor/ and I WORK in a HOSpital
B: WHAT do YOU DO? (addressing C)
C: I’m a proFESsor/ and I LECture at the UniVERsity.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Authentic materials can be helpful when practicing
suprasegmentals.
• Students can practice word or sentence stress by identifying
the stressed syllables or words in limericks, jokes, comics, or
advertisements.
• They can listen to their teacher or a recording of the text,
then mark the stress on their paper, they can also practice
saying the text with a partner then present it to the class.
• Alternatively, students can seek out a joke in their own time
and practice saying it before class, then tell the joke to the
class. For example:
Question: What happens when you play a country music song
backward?
Answer: You get your wife back, your job back, your money
back, your house back, your truck back…
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Complete Question 4 in your Task Journal.
•
Task Journals can be submitted via email to
[email protected] (preferred) or printed and handed in.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute