miércoles, 25 de abril de 2012

INTONATION

INTONATION: The variation of tone used when speaking.

What is intonation?
Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it's impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words.
Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention to the words: the 'melody' you hear is the intonation. It has the following features:

It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.

The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has their own pitch range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English has particularly wide pitch range.

In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination of the two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit.

These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning.

Example:
- Say: 'It's raining'.
- Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning. You could say it to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!'. There are many possibilities.

NOTE :)

RISING INTONATION- IS ANSWERABLE BY YES OR NO

1.Do you think his funny?

2.Is your father handsome?

3.Can you sing?

4.Is this your school?

5.Do you eat Adobo?

FALLING INTONATION- IS A SENTENCE, A QUESTION THAT IS NOT ANSWERABLE BY YES OR NO..................But it is answerable by a sentence or a statement.

1.What is the brand of your pencil?

2What is your Sister's name?

3.What is the 4 fundamental oppertions?

4.My sister is hard working.

5.What's your name?

domingo, 22 de abril de 2012

SENTECE ESTRESS

SENTENCES STRESS: where word stress is the accent on one syllable in a word, sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence. Often considered to be the "rhythm" of English. Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English, especially when spoken fast.

EXAMPLE:

Where do you live? (strong - weak - weak - strong)

NOTE

It is important to remember that an English sentence will have a certain number of beats. Stressed (content) words always take up an entire “beat”, while “unstressed” function words fall between the beats – irrespective of how many function words have been grouped together. The time between beats is always the same. For this reason, function words are often spoken faster and with less volume – they are literally being “squeezed” into the gap between regular stressed beats. In the examples below, all of the function words (or groups of function words) take the same amount of time to pronounce, irrespective of the number of sounds or syllables they include. Doing a simple rhythmic clap or thump in time to the spoken sentence will demonstrate how this happens.

Examples:

	Beat 1		Beat 2	Beat 3
I am	talking	to the	clever	students.

	Beat 1		Beat 2		Beat 3	Beat 4
You’re	sitting	on the	desk	but you	aren’t	listening	to me.

	Beat 1	Beat 2		Beat 3		Beat 4
He’s	writing	quickly	so it’s	difficult	for him to	hear	me.

Exercise: Write out a number of sentences. Read each of them stressing a different word each time you read them. Notice how the meaning changes depending on which word you stress. Don't be afraid to exaggerate the stress, in English we often use this device to add meaning to a sentence. It's very possible that when you think you are exaggerating, it will sound quite natural to native speakers.

I said she might consider a new haircut.

Say the sentence aloud using the stress word marked in bold. Once you have spoken the sentence a few times, match the sentence version to the meaning below. You will find the answers to this quiz on the following page.

I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.
I said she might consider a new haircut.

Not just a haircut.
It's a possibility.
It was my idea.
Not something else.
Don't you understand me?
Not another person.
She should think about it. it's a good idea.

ENGLISH VOWEL SOUNDS

LINKS

DIPTHONG "OU" "OI" "OW"

http://www.phonicsworld.com/voweldiphthong.html

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Origin

The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phonétique Internationale (International Phonetic Association), a group of French language teachers founded by Paul Passy. The aim of the organisation was to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech which was independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.

A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used as a model for the IPA.

Uses

The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.
The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages.
The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to speak English.