martes, 27 de noviembre de 2012

Grammar

TKT KAL Grammar tip:
I've been doing the "Grammar for teachers: Language awareness" online course available at http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/, (I got it for free when I registered as a guest!) It's great practice for the Grammar part of the exam AND you get a certificate of completion.

Grammar for teachers: Language awareness


Aims:

Language areas covered on the course include:
word classes, such as nouns, adjectives, determiners, modals
present forms, such as present simple and present continuous
past forms, such as past simple, past perfect and conditionals
forms that bridge the past and the present, such as present perfect
future forms, such as going to and will 
the passive 
reported speech.

By the end of the course you should be able to:
• use English grammar terms more confidently
• understand the form, meaning and use of a variety of grammar structures
• reflect upon your awareness of language.

Methods:

Online self-study

The tasks within this course encourage you to reflect upon your own knowledge of the English language.


To successfully complete the course, you will be required to:
•   check your progress and understandingthrough a range of interactive activities
•   participate in discussion forums with other teachers
•   keep a learner journal.

jueves, 22 de noviembre de 2012

Intonation


What is intonation?
It’s the pattern of pitch variation
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. An utterance can be given a variety of different meanings according to the intonation patterns given by the speaker.
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'.(A simple complete pitch pattern) They help us isolate pitch patterns by defining where one pattern ends and the next begins.
·         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. (It carries the main pitch change and it also carries prominence)
·         These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning.

Example: 
o    Say: 'It's raining'.
o    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.

Intonation and grammar
Where patterns associating intonation and grammar are predictable, I highlight these to my students. I see these as starting-points, rather than rules.
Some examples are:
·         Declarative statements: falling intonation
  • Wh-word questions: falling intonation
  • Yes/No questions: rising
  • Question-Tags: 'chat' - falling; 'check' ( a real question) – rising
  • Imperative:  falling intonation
  • Lists: rising, rising, rising, falling

Intonation and attitude
It's important that students are aware of the strong link between intonation and attitude, even if it's difficult to provide rules here.
·         The first thing is for learners to recognise the effect of intonation changes. I say the word 'bananas' - firstly with an 'interested' intonation (varied tone); then 'uninterested' (flat). Students identify the two and describe the difference. We then brainstorm attitudes, such as 'enthusiastic', 'bored', 'surprised', 'relieved'. I say 'bananas' for these. Students then do the same in pairs, guessing each other's attitude.
·         This can be developed by asking students to 'greet' everybody with a particular attitude. At the end, the class identify each person's attitude. For younger learners, I use 'Mr Men' characters (Miss Happy, Mr Grumpy, Miss Frightened, etc.) Each student is allocated a character and, as above, they greet the class with that character's voice.

Intonation and discourse
Learners' also need awareness of intonation in longer stretches of language. Intonation can be used as a way of organizing and relating together meanings  throughout the discourse. Here, we can give our learners clearer guidelines: 'new' information = fall tone; 'shared' knowledge = 'fall-rise'.
A simple shopping dialogue demonstrates this:
SK: Can I help you?
C: I'd like a chocolate (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise) ice-cream. Anything else?
C: One strawberry (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall), one strawberry (fall). Anything else?
C: Yes. One chocolate (fall), one strawberry (fall), and one vanilla (fall-rise).
Higher level students can identify the 'new' / 'shared' information, and then practise reading accordingly.
Pitch direction and range
Differences in the extent and direction of pitch change are related to attitudes.
Pitch range:
-Two friends who haven’t seen each other in six months, bump into each other at a party. They say Hi!
When they say “Hi” the pitch range is going to be wide, that denotes high involvement, typically excitement or surprise
In contrast:
-Two friends A and B haven’t seen each other in a long time During this time B has heard that A has been saying unpleasant things about him/her.
 When B says Hi to A, the pitch range is going to be narrow, which suggests distance, boredom, even hostility.
By extension, politeness and rudeness are thought to be linked to wide and narrow pitch ranges respectively.

Pitch Direction: (Rising, Falling, fall-rise)

The conventional view on the relation between intonation and sentence structures claims that :
-Statements and Wh- questions have falling tones
-yes-no questions have rising tones.
However, different tone contours are equally plausible.
Some of the most reliable rules are the following
-      In Question Tags: A rise for genuine questions and a fall when the question is only to confirm what the speaker already knows.
-      In discourse, for example, in a conversation between two people (see below)
They use:
For things that are common ground between them, when they are reminding each other of things they both know, they use  an “open ended” referring tone (fall.rise)
When they are introducing a new idea or enlarging the common ground by either adding or soliciting more information they use a proclaiming tone, which is a fall tone


Did you get everything for the office?
Here are the envelopes and the stamps (Referring tone). But there wasn't any paper( proclaiming tone)
Who's cming to the dinner party?
As you know, we´ve invited the Whites and the Robsons (Referring tone) But I also invited the Jenkins. (Proclaiming)
From Intonation in Context by B. Bradford)


About Language, Scott Thrornbury, Cambridge University Press, 1997
Sound Foundations, Adrian Underhill, Macmillam 1994

lunes, 19 de noviembre de 2012

Connected Speech

What is connected speech?

When we speak naturally we do not pronounce a word, stop, then say the next word in the sentence. Fluent speech flows with a rhythm and the words bump into each other. To make speech flow smoothly the way we pronounce the end and beginning of some words can change depending on the sounds at the beginning and end of those words.
These changes are described as features of connected speech.


Taken from 

Elision

This is when a sound gets left out/omitted in connected speech. It often happens with the sounds /t/ or /d/ or other plosives before following consonants
Plosive sounds /t/ and /d/ occurring at the end of words before a following consonant tend to disappear

I don’t know /aɪ dəʊ nəʊ/
great time
red berries
largest lake
inched towards  

Also: H sound in weak forms (Unless it’s the beginning of a sentence)

Assimilation

This is when a sound changes to become closer/ more similar to a neighbouring sound. It can occur both  in words and at word boundaries and mainly affects consonants, particularly  alveolar consonants /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /ʃ/ and /z

Alveolar consonants /t/, /d/, /n/, at the end of a word often assimilate to the pkace of articulation of the consonant at the beginning of the next word. Before /p/, /b/ and /m/ for example, they become bilabial.

In bed   /ɪm bed/
Good boy /gʊb bɔɪ/

/d/ can change to /g/
Good girl /gʊg gɜ:l/

Voicing can change too Here /v/ becomes an unvoiced /f/ under the influence of
the following unvoiced /t/:
Have to go    /hæf tə gəʊ/
/d/ and /j/ can fuse, or coalesce, to make a less plosive sound, the affricate /ʤ/:
how d’you do   /haʊ ʤʊ du:/
And similarly /t/ and /j/ can coalesce to give the unvoiced affricate //ʧ/ /:
/dəʊnʧə nəʊ/


Intrusion

This happens when we add a sound/phoneme. It usually happens at word  boundaries especially between two  vowels. The sounds that are introduced are /j/, /w/ or /r/.
These occur between a word ending in a vowel sound and the subsequent word beginning with a vowel sound.
b. why I’ve (intrusive /j/);
d. never ever (intrusive/ linking /r/);
e. saw it (intrusive /r/);
h. you order (intrusive /w/)

Linking /r/
In RP the letter ‘r’ in the spelling of a word is not pronounced unless it is followed
by a vowel sound. But in connected speech the final spelling ‘r’ of a word may be
pronounced or not, depending on whether the first sound of the next word is a
consonant or a vowel.
never ever (intrusive/ linking /r/);
Intrusive /r/
This refers to the /r/ sound an English speaker may insert between two words
where the first ends in /􀔥/ or / / and the following word begins with a vowel
sound.
saw it (intrusive /r/);  
Intrusive /w/ and /j/
These are also used to link certain vowel-vowel combinations at word junctions.
The intrusive sound may not be distinctly heard especially where the overall
vowel sequence is fairly relaxed. Nevertheless you will find it noticeable in all
sorts of recorded material, and it has great value as a learning device when
helping learners towards a smooth linking of words in continuous speech.

You are /jʊ w ɑ:/

Vowel reduction, weak and strong forms

Some vowels become shortened and less clear when they are not stressed. This happens particularly with /i/ which gets reduced to /ɪ/, and /u:/ which gets reduced to /ʊ/. In English, some monosyllabic words also have weak and strong forms depending on whether they are stressed or not. An example is the strong form of the definite article /θi/ and its weak form /θə/.
What do you want to do tomorrow?
I don’t know why I’ve decided to go away so soon 

Taken from Cambridge Resources for teachers: TKT KAL (teachers,cambridgeesol.org)  and "Sound Foundations, Learning and teaching pronunciation", Adrian Underhill, Macmillan, 2005.

I strongly suggest you go to this website to see some examples 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/features/connected.shtml

There are radio programmes that you can download (in mp3 format)  about the different features of connected speech such as:
-Consonant sound to vowel sound linking or Linking /r/Intrusive /r/ and Intrusive /wand /j/
-The linking that takes place when a word ends in a consonant sound and the next word beging with the same or a very similar consonant sound or Elision (when a sound disappears) and Assimilation (when a sound changes)
-Sounds that change in connected speech: Weak and Strong forms


http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/progs/prog2.shtml#ellision
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/progs/prog3.shtml#assimilation
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/pronunciation/mp3/tae_pronunciation3.mp3

viernes, 16 de noviembre de 2012

Sentence Stress


In English, stress also influences how sentences and incomplete sentences are pronounced. We say different parts of the sentence with more or less stress, i.e.  slower and louder or quicker and more softly. This is called sentence stress. One word in the sentence has main stress. This is the word which the speaker thinks is most important to the meaning of the sentence. Other words can have secondary stress.  This is not so strong as the main stress and falls on words which are not so important to the meaning as the word with main stress. Other words in the sentence are unstressed. For example, in “She came home late last night” or “I can’t understand a word he says”, the words with the mains stress are the underlined ones, the words with secondary stress would probably be came, home, last, night, and can’t, understand, says, and the unstressed words she and I, a, he.
Main and secondary stress are usually on content words(verbs, adjectives, nouns, they give more information) rather than structural words(articles, prepositions, grammar words)
Changing the stress of a sentence changes its meaning
Look at these examples:
The girl ran to the sea and jumped in quickly (i.e. not another person)
The girl ran to the sea and jumped in quickly (i.e. not to any other place)          
The girl ran to the sea and jumped in quickly (i.e. not in any other way)
Sentence stress is a characteristic of connected speech, i.e. spoken language in which all the words join to make a connected stream of sounds
Taken from “The TKT Course”, Spratt, Pulverness, Williams, Cambridge University Press

English is a stress timed language
The English language is often referred to as stress-timed. This means that stress in a spoken sentence occurs at regular intervals and the length it takes to say something depends on the number of stressed syllables rather than the number of syllables itself
Try saying the sentences below
1                                         2                                               3                                             4
1  and                                2  and                                     3   and                                   4
1 and a                              2  and a                                  3 and a                                 4
1 and then a                    2  and then a                        3 and then a                        4

The four sentences take the same length of time to say and you will notice the numbers are stressed and the unstressed words in between are said much more quickly in order to keep the rhythm of the language. In other languages, which are not stress-timed the stress would fall more equally on each word and syllable.”
http://esol.britishcouncil.org/teaching-pronunciation/sentence-stress

jueves, 15 de noviembre de 2012

Weak Forms



Some English words can be pronounced in two different ways: A weak form and a strong form. Most of these are function words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, contractions, etc), all of which are sometimes pronounced in their strong forms, but  are more frequently pronounced in their strong form. In some contexts only the strong form would be acceptable and in others, the weak form is the normal pronunciation.
Rules:
.       The strong form is used in the following cases:
·         When weak form words occur at the end of a sentence. For example the word “of”  is weak in the sentence “I’m fond of chips” /aɪm ˈfɒnd əv ˈʧɪps/ and strong in “Chips are what I’m fond of” /ˈʧɪps ə ˈwɒt aɪm ˈfɒnd ɒv/
·         When a weak form  is being contrasted with another word , The letter’s from him, not to him /ðə ˈletəz ˈfrɒm ɪm nɒt ˈtu: ɪm/
Coordinated use of prepositions “I travel to and from London a lot”
/aɪ  ˈtrævəl ˈtu: ən ˈfrɒm ˈlʌndən ə ˈlɒt/
·         When a weak form is given stress for the purpose of emphasis
You must  give me more money  /ju ˈmʌst ˈgɪv mi ˈmɔ: ˈmʌnɪ/
·         When a weak form word is cited or quoted
You shouldn’t put  “and” at the end of a sentence  /ju ˈʃʊdˌnt pʊt ˈænd ət ðɪ ˈend  əv ə ˈsentəns/
Another point to remember is that when weak –form words whose spelling begins with “h” occur at the beginning of a sentence,  the pronunciation is with initial h, even though this is usually omitted in other contexts.


Some common weak form words

1.     THE: /ðə/  before consonants and /ðɪ/ before vowels /ðə ‘dɔ:/,  /ðɪ ‘æpl/
2.     A/ AN : /ə/ before consonants and /ən/ before vowels. /ə ˈbʊk /, /ən ˈæpl/
3.     AND: /ən/ (sometimes  /n/ after / t, d s, z , ʃ/  /ˈfɪʃ n ˈʧɪps/
4.     BUT:  /bət/
5.     THAT:  /ðət/ This word only has a weak form when used in a relative clause; when used in a demonstrative sense it is always pronounced in its strong form.
The price is the thing that annoys me /ðə ˈpraɪs ɪz ðə ˈθɪŋ ðət əˈnɔɪz mɪ/
6.     THAN: ən/
7.     HIS: /ɪz/ When it occurs before a noun. (/hɪz/ at the beginning of a sentence)
Another sense of his, as in it was his, or his was late always takes the strong form.
8.     HER: /ə/before consonants /ˈteɪk ə ˈhəʊm/
/ər/ before vowels /ˈteɪk ər ˈaʊt/
9.     SOME:  This word is used in two different ways. In one sense (Typically when it occurs before a countable noun meaning “an unknown individual”)  it takes the strong form:
I think some animal broke it /aɪ ˈθɪŋk sʌm ˈænɪml ˈbrəʊk ɪt/
It is also used before uncountable nouns (meaning an unspecified amount of) and before other nouns in the plural (meaning an unspecified number of), in such cases it takes the weak form /səm/
10. THERE:  When this word has a demonstrative function, it always occurs in its strong form /ðeə/  (/ðeər/ before vowels) /ðeər ɪt ˈɪz/´
Weak forms: /ðə/ (before consonants) /ðə ʃʊd bɪ ə ˈru:l/
/ðər/ (before vowels) /ðər ˈɪz/
In final position the pronunciation may be /ðər /, /ðeə/
There isn’t any, is there? /ðər ˈɪznt eni ˈɪz ðə/
/ðər ˈɪznt eni ˈɪz ðə/ or /ðər ˈɪznt en ˈɪz ðeə/
11. DO/DOES: Weak forms:
DO: /də/ before consonants.
Why do they like it? /ˈwaɪ də ðeɪ ˈlaɪk ɪt/
/du/ before vowels
DOES: /dəz/ When does it arrive? /ˈwen dəz ɪt əˈraɪv/
In final position and when used as a main verb: /du:/ / dʌz/




Words that function both as auxiliary verbs and main verbs


When used as auxiliaries: weak form

Which have you seen? /ˈwɪʧ əv ju: ˈsi:n/

When used as main verbs: strong form 

I have a brother /ˈaɪ hæv ə ˈbrʌðə/

Adapted from "English Phonetics and Phonology", Peter Roach, Cambridge University Press






martes, 30 de octubre de 2012

Standard Word Patterns in Word Stress


I found this article in http://www.onestopenglish.com/,  the Macmillan teacher’s resource website, which is definitely a very reliable source of information.
 This is a huge area. However, there are some fairly regular patterns and these might help your student. The following general “rules” may be of some use but bear in mind that there will often be exceptions!
1.       With verbs of two syllables, if the second syllable of the verb contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or if it ends with more than one consonant, the second syllable is stressed.
Examples: apply, attract, complete, arrive, resist
2.      With verbs of two syllables, if the final syllable contains a short vowel and one (or no) final consonant, the first syllable is stressed.
Examples: enter, open, equal, borrow, profit

Exceptions to this rule include admit and permit (verb).

3.      There are some suffixes (or word endings) that usually carry stress. Words with these endings usually carry stress on the last syllable:
-ain
entertain
-ee
refugee
-eer
mountaineer
-ese
Portuguese
-ette
cigarette (NB American English would stress the first syllable)
-esque
picturesque


4.      The main or primary stress usually falls on the syllable before these endings:
-ion
decision, application
-ious / -eous
contentious, courageous
-ity
simplicity
-ive
extensive
-graphy
photography, biography

5.      In compound words or words made up of two elements, there are again some general patterns.
·         If the first part of the word is broadly speaking a noun, then the first element will normally carry more stress:
typewriter, car ferry, suitcase, tea cup
·         If the first part is broadly speaking an adjective, then the second element will carry more stress
loudspeaker, bad-tempered, black market, young learner
Methodology: stress patterns in English, By Tim Bowen