summary for the demostration

Introduction

Learning the intonation patterns of a language is essential both for

listening and speaking. Some believe that teaching and learning English

intonation in L2 and ESL environments is a positive step towards the

achievement of intelligible pronunciation. In this demonstration project,

based on the article “Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension” (J.B

Gilbert, 1984) and a short review of other authors’ supportive concepts, a

lesson plan was designed to implement these concepts in first grade

bilingual classrooms. As the main objective, students will be able to identify

the emphasis and pauses in sentences in order to improve their listening and

speaking skills.

Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension 1

Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension

Pronunciation and listening are closely related in a speech loop

between speaker and listener. The most powerful signals in spoken English

are expressed by intonational devices: pitch patterns and timing or

otherwise called the musical patterns of English. In English, the most

important functions in intonation are the following: to show contrast between

new information and old information, and to show boundaries between

thought groups. English learners can benefit by practicing in class, the main

functions of English intonation and the basic physical devices: pitch change,

lengthening and vowel clarity. In the same way, practice with the signals for

thought grouping boundaries can improve both comprehension and

comprehensibility (Gilbert, 1984).

Relating Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension

The importance of listening and pronunciation skills is emphasized in

the curriculum Listening and pronunciation are key elements in the

improvement of language ability. Nevertheless, in speech, people often use

intonation to focus the listener’s attention on aspects of the message that

are most important. Intonation and stress work together to express meaning

and this makes it easier for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying

to convey.

Indeed when we talk about intonation, we can remember the phrase:

"It's not what you said, it's how you said it!”. This clearly illustrates in a very

simple way the importance of intonation. Of course, this is in reference to the


intonation pattern of words or phrases being uttered rather than their lexical

content.

Equally significant is the fact that native speakers are often unaware of

intonation and its role in their language. This applies to English as well as to

other spoken languages. Simply put, it means that while native English

speakers can easily recognize the grammatical and pronunciation difficulties

faced by non-native speakers, and thus make allowances for their errors,

however, they are unable to do so for intonation. More often than not,

intonation errors made by non-native speakers may not be recognized and,

hence, may lead to misunderstanding.

This buttresses the argument that intonation is a strong aspect of

language which has always had its effect on communication. Pike in

(Hewings, 1995) clarifies this point with the argument that “We often react

more violently to . . . intonational meanings than to . . .lexical ones; if a

man's tone of voice belies his words, we immediately assume that the

intonation more faithfully reflects his true linguistic intentions” (p. 251).

Despite such doubting comments, many professionals working in L2

(Second Language) or ESL (English as a Second Language) environments

tend to accept popular research and anecdotal data showing persistent

problems and difficulties arising from intonational misunderstandings

between native and non-native speakers.

Misunderstanding is not only the main problem of intonation difficulties

but also conversation with native speakers can become an embarrassing


situation for many students. This embarrassment is caused by the

communication difficulties and the inability to convey their ideas. This

inability can lead to discouragement to many students since they understand

written words but not spoken ones. As it is well known, communication

depends on both sides the speaker and the listener. This is a constant

process of reassessment of matching systems of speech signals and that is

the reason why listening skills and pronunciation are directly interrelated.

Intonation: The Musical Signals of English

Intonation is the most important part of English pronunciation referred

here as the music of language. This consists of pitch patterns (melody) and

timing patterns (timing). Comprehension is greatly affected by faulty musical

patterns because these patterns are directly tied to critically important

signals for meaning. If student does not use these signals, pronunciation is

impaired. In the same, if the student does not recognize these signals in the

speech of a native speaker, then listening comprehension is impaired.

Brown (1977) explained the importance of intonation in this way: “the ability

to identify stressed syllables and make intelligent guesses about the content

of the message from the information is absolutely essential”.

But, what is intonation? It is generally believed that it is spoken sounds

strung together, one after the other. More precisely, speech is a continuum;

a continuous flux of initiatory, phonatory, and articulatory states and

movements, constantly changing, often overlapping and interpenetrating


and influencing each other. According to Catford (1992), when people look at

isolated sounds, they are artificially cutting up that flowing chain of events

into a series of segments or segmental sounds. In reality, these segments

are the speech-sounds that are isolated out of the continuum.

For one, native English speakers produce melodies of varying kinds,

with the voice rising and falling. Such melodies are technically called

intonation. Nevertheless, opinions do differ when defining intonation. Ladd

(1980), an eminent Canadian scholar of phonology, defines it as “The use of

suprasegmental phonetic features (pitch) to convey postlexical or sentence-

level pragmatic meanings in a linguistically structured way” (p. 6). On the

other hand, in Ranalli (2002), Cruttenden, equates it specifically with pitch

movements, while Coulthard identifies it with prosody which would include

not only pitch movements but also loudness, length, speed, and even voice

quality. Pitch, however, seems to be the common thread running through

most definitions or descriptions of intonation. Cruttenden describes pitch as

the “perceptual correlate of fundamental frequency” (p. 1), which, in

essence, is the continuous variation in the sounds we perceive as a result of

the vibration of the vocal cords. As such, intonation can be described as the

movements or variations in pitch to which we attach familiar labels

describing levels (e.g. high / low) and tones (e.g. falling / rising), etc. (Ranalli,

2002).

Marking New Information- Old Information


English uses intonation to mark the distinction between old and new

information. Old information concerns ideas already discussed or mutually

understood and new information concerns the new thought to which the

speaker wishes to call attention. The shift of emphasis is systematic in

conversation because it helps the listener and speaker follow each other’s

thoughts and it is called sentence stress. Sentence stress has four different

signals: pitch change, length of vowel, clarity of vowel, and loudness.

The clarity of the vowel is a particularly difficult concept for students

since in their native languages all vowels are spoken in a full, clear way. The

English system of stress requires reductions of some vowels to show which

syllables are stressed.

Contrast shows which words are emphasized or important and which

words are not emphasized or less important. English listeners depend on

contrast of emphasis to know which words are genuinely important and if

language learners emphasize many words just to be understood, they may

confuse the English listener searching for emphasis. The emphasized words

are the content words such as nouns, main verbs, adverbs and adjectives;

and the not emphasized words are the structure words such as pronouns,

prepositions, articles, “to be” verbs, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs.

Thought Groups and Pause

What are thought groups? Thought groups refer to natural divisions we

make when reading a text, speaking to other people, or giving a speech in

front of a class. It is important to stress that these divisions or “speech


chunks” are natural because, whether you are a foreign speaker of English

and a native speaker of a different language, we divide or chunk our speech

or a passage we are reading keeping the essence of logical linked ideas.

What are thought groups used for? A thought group is a speech

unit speakers use to divide the message they want to convey. That is, when

reading a text, we pay attention to punctuation marks, which are natural

thought group divisions writers use to separate ideas, to better comprehend

what is being said in sentences. When speaking, we do not use punctuation

marks, yet we signal the beginning or end of a new idea, -thought group-,

with a short pause.

How many thought groups can we find in a sentence in a text? That

depends on what kind of sentence you are analyzing. A sentence such as

“She’s a nice person /,” just contains a thought group, since it is rather short.

However, a statement like “Since I moved to this neighborhood, / I have

gone jogging in the park / because I want to be fit / and need to get more

vitality /” has four different chunks because this complex compound

sentence includes several ideas that a speaker or writer intends to

communicate.

To sum up, thought groups serve two different purposes. On the

speaker’s hand, s/he is giving the chance to breathe. No breathing implies

the absence of air in one’s lungs; then speech becomes simply impossible.

On the listener’s hand, it is essential time that is necessary to process the


information provided by the speaker. That is why we can state that thought

groups contribute with “good” communication.

Musical signals are used to mark the end of thought groups; the

speaker marks the end of a group with a pause. In rapid speech, there may

not be time for a pause, so a second signal is relied on: a pitch fall on the

final syllable. Listeners can also hear punctuation which marks thought

groups. Indeed, intonation can assist the development of receptive skills and

can help the student to process “what goes with what” and how information

structure is developed.

Teaching and Learning Processes

English intonation may be best taught if it is instructed and practiced

with the appropriate use of phrase boundaries. Since the use of phrase

boundaries/grouping is closely related to speakers’ pausing manner,

teachers are encouraged to help students learn when and how they should

pause their speech, using correct intonation patterns.

Additionally, learners who tend to have difficulty in stressing content

words adequately are likely to make problematic intonational errors in their

speech. Such students should learn how to distinguish content words from

function words before learning how to sentence-stress properly. And since

acquiring intonation skills is closely linked to a learner’s semantic

understanding, L2 and ESL teachers are urged to teach English intonation

with much emphasis on communicative purposes and functions and in a

socially-interactive setting.


Indeed, teachers are encouraged to teach English intonation not only

in pronunciation/conversation classes, but also in other classes such as

reading, listening, etc.

Mediation activity

In light of the importance that emphasis, grouping and pause patterns

have in the learning process of English, it is advisable to teach these

concepts at a young age. For this reason, the activity designed for this

project is aimed at first graders. The lesson plan is based on the popular


book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, an author that revolutionized the

field of beginning readers in the 1930’s and that is still a favorite today.

Geisel’s wit and imagination captivate the young reader attention, and the

lively visual and verbal play in his stories allow for them to be used

productively in language learning activities.

The mediation activity starts with a motivation focused on relating the

book with the movie “Horton Hears a Who!”. Then, it is followed by a Pre-

Task exercise with some of the vocabulary in the story. The main exercise

consists of three parts: watching a video with the narration, listening to and

repeating some sentences in the story with emphasis patterns and again,

listening to and repeating other sentences with pauses. As a Post-Task

exercise, the students are given materials to create their own book in groups

and present it to the class. Through these actions, the general and specific

objectives in the lesson plan can be fully achieved.


Conclusion

An effective learning/teaching process of English must be

comprehensive. The young learner is easy to mold in the ways of a

language; however, appropriate, meaningful and engaging lessons are

needed at early ages because, otherwise, the child will lose interest and the

objectives will not be reached. Activities with stories are always welcome in


elementary classrooms, because for children, book reading is a treat.

Therefore, when working with a story, it is possible to reach deep into the

child’s mind and explore endless possibilities of information transfer. When

working with intonation patterns, many books lend themselves for teaching

the topic successfully and in an entertaining way. In the case of Dr. Seuss’

books, they can be easily adapted for the purpose because of the basic

vocabulary, the repetition of patterns and the always surprising use of

language.

References

Al-Sibai, D. (2004) Intonation:A Suprasegmental Aspect of the English

Language.

Catford, J. C. (1992). Prosodic Features. In A Practical Introduction to

Phonetics

(pp. 172-186). Oxford: Clarendon Press.


Gilbert, J.B (1984) Clear Speech. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hewings, M. (1995, August) Tone Choice in the English Intonation of Non-

Native

Speakers. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language

Teaching , 33, 251-265. Retrieved

Ranalli, J. M. Discourse Intonation: To Teach or not to Teach? Birmingham:

University of Birmingham. Retrieved May 14, 2004, from http://www.

cels.bham. ac.uk /resources/essays/Rannali4.pdf


Appendix

A


summary for the demostration

Documents