Teaching English intonation and stress

Current methods of teaching English intonation, rhythm and stress.

Teaching English Intonation and Stress Patterns

Early Theories

The first thing that people such as Daniel Jones, Kingdon and Pike looked at was pitch variation.

1. Tone – the rise and fall of the voice: tune/pitch variation. An oscilloscope can produce an oscillograph of speech. Frequency is shown by the closeness of the waves: high frequency produces waves which are closer together.

2. Volume – the strength of the signal – is shown by the height of the waves. The height of the note depends on the speed of opening and closing of the vocal cords. More vibrations of the larynx (up to 800 per second) produce more closely spaced waves.

Basic rules were then formed, such as:

Later linguists, who have collected data rather than relying on introspection (“What do I say?”), have questioned the validity of these rules, as well as claims that intonation tells us what the speech function of an utterance is.

As models to offer learners who want to be understood, I take the view that basic rules still have their place, even if they do not reflect what all native speakers do. They at least raise awareness that tone contributes to what the listener perceives.

Practice

One of the most influential practice books, used for many years from 1959 (perhaps still) at University College London, the workplace of some of Britain's best linguists, is Intonation of Colloquial English by J. D. O'Connor and G. F. Arnold.

O'Connor and Arnold define ten tone groups and give them memorable names describing movements of pitch:

In their chapter Intonation and Meaning, they concede that “no tone group is used exclusively with this or that sentence type” and similarly that “no sentence type always requires the use of one and only one tone group”.

While surveying their ten tone groups and sentence types, such as statements, wh-questions and yes/no questions beginning with an auxiliary verb, they also define attitudes such as “weighty”, “judicial”, “serious”, “urgent”, “unsure” and “tentative”. O'Connor and Arnold are not alone in believing that intonation is related to attitude.

A similar, yet simpler, approach is adopted in two works by V. J. Cook, which can be found as used books:

  1. Active Intonation [1978]. This contains 20 lessons with accompanying language laboratory drills. The drills were bought separately and consisted of three audio cassettes.
  2. Using Intonation [1979]. This is more of a pamphlet than a book and was clearly influenced by the emerging popularity of functional syllabuses in the mid to late 1970s. There is a single audio cassette, bought separately, containing examples, listening exercises and conversations.

V. J. Cook acknowledges that the description of English intonation in his courses is basically that of J. D. O'Connor and G. F. Arnold (see above). However, to simplify things, Cook's classification offers half as many tone groups:

  1. the high fall
  2. the low fall
  3. the high rise
  4. the low rise
  5. the fall-rise

While correlating tone groups loosely with language functions, Cook also makes reference to attitude. For example, a low fall with a high head sounds “rather definite”, while a low rise with a high head suggests that “the speaker is in control of the situation and has some authority”.

Linking Tunes to the Functions of Utterances

Many authors of intonation practice books have provided exercises in which speech functions such as polite requests or confirmation questions dictate the intonation patterns which listeners should expect or speakers should employ.

However, the findings of some research projects – most notably the Scottish Intonation Project – suggest that the relationships between intonation patterns, such as the tones categorised by O'Connor and Arnold, and speech functions are not so predictable.

Some clear instances of rising tune include:

  1. Echo questions: “You what?”
  2. Challenging: “On Monday?”
  3. Conciliation: “Oh really?”

Other works on spoken English emphasise that attitude is not conveyed by pitch alone. There is more to context than pitch.

Gillian Brown's Listening to Spoken English includes material on paralinguistic features. Variables include:

These features are correlated with descriptions from novels, such as replied, said, retorted, exclaimed, important, pompous, responsible, sadly, depressed, miserable, excited, anxious, worried, nervous, shrill, shriek, scream, warmly, coldly, thoughtfully, sexily, crossly, angrily, queried and echoed.

Gillian Brown uses feature analysis (+, – or /) to make these connections. The idea of “Para-Language” comes from Abercrombie. Desmond Morris has written a popular book on the subject; English people, for example, converse at approximately 24 inches apart.

Discourse Intonation – e.g. Turn-Taking Between Speakers

Another approach to explaining the function of intonation, pioneered by David Brazil, regards it as discoursal, rather than grammatical or attitudinal, as in the O'Connor and Arnold model.

See the Speech in Action website for information about the theory of the tone unit within this method of analysis, known as discourse intonation.

The Importance of Intonation in Social Interaction

TURN-TAKING: Giving the floor to another person or taking your turn in a conversation. Rise and fall are used as signals indicating when to speak and when not to speak. Remain at a high pitch if you want to continue talking. A fall shows completion. (See Brazil.)

INFORMATION STRUCTURE: Major stress items pick out the most important words in the sentence. They point to new or unknown information in the sentence. Michael Halliday has done much of the work in this area.

Note that one function of intonation is stress. The tonic (stressed item) is the item which has the greatest amount of pitch movement on it.

Studies of Intonation – Implications for Teaching English Pronunciation

Many linguists and teachers suggest that teachers should focus on teaching STRESS rather than RISE & FALL

There is a massive difference between how one person and another perceives an utterance. In many cases, you need a machine to determine whether something is a rise or a fall.

At higher levels – for example, in pronunciation sessions for learners involved in the language of negotiation or presentation in fields such as business or education – emphasis should also be given to TOPIC STRUCTURE, which is also related to turn-taking.

Topic switching: start high. When people switch tack, they can mark it with their voice.

CONCLUSION: Teachable items include:

  1. Sentence STRESS
  2. Contrastive STRESS

Distinguish between production and comprehension in your teaching.

Teach intonation in context. For example, when teaching the expression of anger, use model dialogues to represent particular functions of the voice. Some practice in linking intonation patterns to attitude will probably help to produce clearer communication of meaning, in spite of the findings of the Scottish Intonation Project.

Should “Intonation Practice” Material Be Prose Texts or Dialogues?

Could a prose text have been used to equal effect, or does the target depend heavily on face-to-face communication?

Many dialogues in English coursebooks are written specifically for grammar demonstration on the one hand and conversation facilitation on the other. In each case, useful vocabulary is also demonstrated.

Colin Mortimer's dialogues in the Cambridge Elements of Pronunciation series – for example, Stress Time, Weak Forms, Link Up, Clusters and Contractions – include single lexical items and conversational phrases, that is, some very essential features of speaker/listener interaction.

The Case for Reinstating “Intonation Drills” in the Syllabus

Although books for practising English syntax in written form have their purpose, they place no demands on learners to answer within a reasonable time frame.

We are failing as teachers if we do not provide learners with the phonological rehearsal and memory training needed to achieve accuracy in oral English. Many important opportunities were lost to learners when language laboratory pattern drills, particularly the more meaningful varieties, went out of fashion. Part of the challenge set by these drills was responding at speed rather than plodding through written materials.

Self-access centres which offer opportunities for oral English practice will need materials providing simultaneous rehearsal of syntax and pronunciation. Although published several decades ago, the best of these include:

Kernel Lessons – Plus: Laboratory Drills and Tapescript by Robert O'Neill

and

Kernel Lessons: Intermediate Recorded Drills: Tapescripts

Robert O'Neill's drills provide rehearsal through repetition, substitution (simple, variable or progressive), transformation (e.g. question and answer; tense to tense), and combination (e.g. collocation exercises).

Phonology, stress and intonation are being rehearsed all the time. Moreover, Robert's skill in relating syntax – such as structural forms in different verb tenses – to meaning and situation escapes the shortcomings of drills that teach “structure speech”. The drills offer the rehearsal and production opportunities that must be present in the curriculum if we are to have any chance of teaching oral communication. Meaningful contexts and naturalistic settings are present throughout.

Learners and teachers should be suspicious of approaches to learning second languages which ignore the essential need for active rehearsal and production of phonology (vowel and consonant sounds), stress and intonation patterns (signalling meaning and attitude), and syntax (also related to meaning through concepts such as time and completion).

The Various Functions of Intonation in Different World Languages

On this page, we have been concerned with the functions of intonation in spoken English. In world languages, intonation is used to mark:

  1. gender
  2. number
  3. quantity
  4. tense or time
  5. modality
  6. pace (in some languages)
  7. word order
  8. punctuation
  9. boundary features

Teaching English Rhythm and Stress Patterns – Weak Forms, Stress Placement and Timing

As movement of pitch is heard on stressed syllables in English, practice of English intonation and stress patterns is closely linked. However, it can be beneficial to focus specifically on word and sentence stress.

A Pronouncing Dictionary is recommended as a reference source for checking where syllable stress occurs within words. Practising the placement of stress within sentences is also essential if learners are to become good listeners and communicators, since the same sentence can take on different meanings depending on where the speaker chooses to place the primary stress.

EXAMPLE SENTENCE [A]: “I'm not going.”

  1. “I'm not going”: meaning [1] = Not ME, but perhaps YOU, SHE or HE.
  2. “I'm not going”: meaning [2] = I REFUSE to go.
  3. “I'm not going”: meaning [3] = I'm not GOING – I'm COMING BACK!

Sentence stress can also be illustrated and practised by writing a long sentence on the board, which can be made to carry many different meanings or points of emphasis.

EXAMPLE SENTENCE [B]: “Janet's going to Brighton tomorrow afternoon to buy herself a pair of red, leather shoes.”

Practice of sentence stress is achieved by cueing the learners with questions while requiring them to use the whole sentence in reply. The second time this is done, learners can discard the parts of the sentence which do not contain the important element of the answer in order to form a more natural response.

The teacher provides cues such as:

It will become clear to learners that there are many variations of sentence stress, which will decide the meaning of their responses.

A practice session on stress could also be included in a lesson aimed at improving listening comprehension. Learners who listen to utterances in a linear way, giving equal importance to each word in sequence, are exhibiting very poor listening strategies. Such learners are usually the ones who complain that speech is too fast and ask for colloquial English to be spoken at a sluggishly slow pace.

What they are missing is the fact that, in English, the words carrying the important meaning are often located at or towards the end of an utterance or sentence. Words such as “I” – and more difficult items than subject pronouns placed near the beginning of sentences – are often fairly redundant in terms of meaning since they refer to known territory: the listener already knows that it is you who is speaking.

Try the following technique to make your learners more relaxed about rapidly spoken utterances.

EXAMPLE SENTENCE [C]: “I don't know whether you're wondering who I am, but may I introduce myself. I'm Tarzan.”

Having deliberately recited the unimportant parts of this utterance at breakneck speed, reassure your learners by asking them just to listen to the important components near the end of the utterance, especially the words and syllables carrying the main stress.

Make the point that native speakers only listen out for one or two propositions in an utterance and that all this one really communicates is “ME... TARZAN.”

Learning what parts of an utterance to discard – not even to assign to the “recycle bin” – is a very important listening strategy. Native speakers would find listening comprehension impossible if they did not know how to process utterances in this way.

It may be worth mentioning that the keys and tunes used at the beginning of sentences can communicate attitudes. They can tell you if the speaker is angry or trying to be friendly, polite, formal or cold. Without understanding any of the words, it is still possible to detect the speaker's attitude.

Nonsense words – just “pure noises”! – can even be used to practise conveying attitude. In multilingual classes, this can form the basis of an interesting contrastive linguistics project on differences and common ground in the use of tunes and keys to communicate feelings and attitudes.

Leo Jones includes activities of this kind in Notions in English [Cambridge, 22/11/1979]. Ask your learners to utter a nonsense sentence such as “I love you” several times, telling them what attitude – for example, warmth, indifference, pride, hostility, boredom or interest – you wish them to communicate on each occasion.

Fame Academy teachers try to get learners to sing with expression. The challenge for language teachers is to get learners to speak with expression.

Phonology, stress patterns and tunes are all interrelated. To achieve the correct rhythm, it is necessary to know when to use weak forms. This frequently involves the neutral vowel schwa, which is under-used by many second-language learners.

Learners whose native languages have many consonant sounds but relatively few vowel sounds, especially long vowels and diphthongs – for example, native speakers of Arabic languages and dialects – are likely to have poor stress timing and to make insufficient use of pitch variation, that is, intonation.