Stress and Intonation in Spoken English

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishContentsIntroduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2Stress and Intonation in Spoken English ............................................................................................. 2Tonic Syllable ................................................................................................................................. 2Emphatic Stress ............................................................................................................................. 2Contrastive Stress .......................................................................................................................... 3New Information Stress ................................................................................................................. 3Intonation ..................................................................................................................................... 4Tonal Patterns ............................................................................................................................... 4Describing Tone ............................................................................................................................. 6Pitch .............................................................................................................................................. 6Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI1

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishSlide6This time, use emphatic stress to say each of these sentences.Slide7Contrastive StressContrastive stress is of course a type of emphatic stress, making acorrection to what has been said or implied.Slide8Use contrastive stress when you say these sentences.Slide9New Information StressWhen new information is presented another type of emphaticstress can be heard, as in these examples.Slide10In your group create some question and answer dialogues todemonstrate New Information Stress.Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI3

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishSlide11See how many different ways you can say each of these sentencesusing different stress patterns.Slide12IntonationIntonation is of course closely linked to stress with the tonalpattern occurring mostly on the stressed (tonic) syllable.Intonation is the music side of language.Slide13The simple word, ‘Hello’ is spoken with different intonation,depending on who we are speaking to.Slide14When describing intonation scientifically, an intonation unit isdefined by pauses rather than by punctuation and sentencesnecessarily.Slide15Tonal PatternsThere are many patterns and many variations. Here are four of themain ones that have been described by linguists.Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI4

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishSlide16A falling tone can indicate completion, finality, and that it is timefor the other person to respond. (Sometimes when someone failsto use the falling tone, listeners are not sure whether they havefinished or not.)Slide17Try saying these examples with a falling tone. Remember the fallingpart happens on the tonic syllable.Slide18Here are some more falling tone examples to try.Slide19When someone is asking a question that they do not already knowthe answer to, they tend to use a rising tone.Slide20High rise tone starts high and goes higher – it can really hurt yourears! It is an expression of surprise, asking the other person toclarify or repeat what they just said.Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI5

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishSlide21The fall-rise tone goes first down and then up. Besides beingcommon as a regional dialect in some areas, there is a hint that thespeaker does not mean exactly what they say – in fact possibly theopposite.Slide22Describing ToneThere are a number of different ways to describe tone in writtenform – here is one commonly used form (because it can be easilycreated on a keyboard). Note the slashes //, remember that / isused for phonemes and [ ] for phones. The capital letters indicatethe tonal syllable where the tonal pattern is applied. Theunderlined words are also stressed.Slide23The teacher will read a few sentences. Try to write them down withthe tone stress indicators just shown.Slide24PitchWith intonation there is a variation of pitch. However, everybodyhas their own normal pitch range. And some languages tend to bespoken at a higher or lower pitch than others.Slide25In situations of extreme excitement most peoples voices raise inpitch.Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI6

Stress and Intonation in Spoken EnglishSlide26Think of some things that you might say in an emotional situationwith a high pitch.Slide27We sometimes use a very low pitch when we are adding someinformation that may not be important.Slide28Remember – there are no simple rules for intonation. But there aresome general guidelines, and you need to be aware of it and it’sgood if you can also describe it accurately.Otherwise – practice! (Watch a LOT of movies in English!)Slide29Try applying what you have learnt to the short dramas your teacherwill give you.Slide30Ruth Wickham, Brighton Education Training Fellow, IPGKDRI7