|
When we leave the territory of vowels and consonants, we move into the very wide universe of suprasegmental features of a language. As you can imagine, the list is long... The activities in this syllabus will address some of the more challenging features of suprasegmental pronunciation. The aim is to provide a comprehensive sampling of these features.
‘Sentence stress’ is a term used for the relative strength and weakness given to words in a sentence. Some words have more stress or ‘force’ than others. English is a ‘stress-timed’ language which means that the length of an utterance depends on the placement of stressed sounds in words and the stress of those words in the sentence as a whole (NOT the number of syllables as with Spanish, Japanese, Korean and other languages). The rhythm of stress-timed languages may well exhibit a musical quality, while the syllable-timed languages tend to have a predictable meter.
Here we must bow to the complexity of speech. Celce-Murcia explains this single aspect quite well: ‘This rhythmic pattern is similar to the rhythm of a musical phrase. Just as in music, English moves in regular rhythmic beats, from stress to stress.’ Activity Three offers a chance to explore sentence stress in individual sentences and in the context of a dialog.
|
|
1) You will hear one sentence on the first slide. Choose the best match (A, B or C).
2) Slide two provides the correct form. Points are awarded for correct answers.
3) Listen to the mini role play on slide three.
4) Perform the mini role play on slide four. Points are awarded for correct answers.
(Two teams may be chosen to compete for points.)
|
|
© COPYRIGHT The Language Works and its licensors 2006 ~ 2009. All rights reserved. |
|
Latest Language Works effort... |
|
Non~Audio Files |
|
Ideas about Language and Learning |