1. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. The different types of suprasegmentals 2. How suprasegmentals affect comprehension 3. How to teach suprasegmentals You will be able to: 1. Integrate suprasegmentals into your teaching of pronunciation

2. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SUPRASEGMENTALS Suprasegmentals are key to our ability to express ourselves accurately and to be understood by others. To illustrate, an utterance like ‘Your hair is lovely’ can be said in a bored manner, earnestly, sarcastically and many other ways depending on how stress, intonation, and voice quality are used. In other words, the same utterances can mean different things depending on the application of suprasegmentals.

3. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Suprasegmentals are the prosodic properties of sounds. Prosody means the rhythm, stress and intonation of an utterance; in other words how an utterance would sound if you were to take out all of the words and just hum it. Prosody communicates a lot of information about the speaker and about the message; it actually communicates more information than the words the speaker uses. Prosody can tell the listener: the emotional state of the speaker; whether the utterance is a statement, question, or command; the presence of irony or sarcasm; the use of emphasis, contrast, and focus. This information is communicated through pitch, loudness and length.

4. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PITCH Speakers have the ability to control their level of pitch. This is done by manipulating the tension of the vocal folds and controlling the amount of air that passes through the glottis. Greater tension and air pressure results in higher voice pitch, while less tension and air pressure results in lower voice pitch. Humans use two types of pitch movements, tone and intonation.

5. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Some languages are known as tone languages. That is, word meaning is signaled by differences in pitch. For example, in Mandarin, the form ma /ma/ with a falling pitch means ‘scold’, but the same form with a rising pitch means ‘hemp’. In non-tone languages like English, when a speakers says ‘a car?’ with a rising pitch or with a falling pitch, the word ‘car’ maintains its meaning. In tone languages, however, that change in pitch would also change the meaning of the word. Tone languages are found throughout North and South America, Subsaharan Africa and the Far East.

6. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a speaker’s voice. For English, we can divide pitch into four levels; 4 is extra high, 3 is high, 2 is middle, and 1 is low. Normal conversations typically occur between middle and high pitch and low pitch is used to signal the end of an utterance. Consider the word ‘now’. Say it with a rising pitch contour and it becomes a question; say it with a falling pitch contour and it becomes a command. The fundamental meaning of the word is unchanged, but the pattern tells us something about the discourse context.

7. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Pitch movements which are unrelated to word meaning are referred to as intonation. Intonation is the rising and falling of the voice to various pitch levels during an utterance. The sentence ‘Fred parked the car.’ spoken with a falling pitch at the end signals that the action is complete. Falling pitch at the end of an utterance is called terminal intonation contour. In contrast, rising or level intonation can signal incompleteness. We use this type of intonation when we are giving lists and telephone numbers to signal to the hearer that we are not done speaking yet. Say ‘Sally, Fred, Helen and Joe’. Our intonation rises until we utter the last word in the list. This type of intonation is called non-terminal intonation contour.

8. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute In questions, rising intonation is also used to signal incompleteness. We use this intonation pattern to indicate that our conversation is not finished yet. Rising intonation typically occurs in yes/no questions. Consider the question ‘Did you have a nice time?’ English sentences that contain question words such as ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘how’, do not usually employ rising intonations. The question words themselves seem to be enough to indicate that a response is required. Say, ‘What did you buy?’

9. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 1. INTONATION Write three possible intonations for the following sentences or questions. Explain the meaning that each intonation gives the sentence or question. A. I am going to take a camel ride in the desert. B. I thought I told you to stay here. C. What do you think? D. No. E. He left already.

10. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute LOUDNESS Loudness is an obvious way to convey meaning over and above our word choice. By increasing the volume of what we say we can convey anger, frustration, happiness or any range of strong emotions. By decreasing the volume of what we say we can convey nervousness, reserve or tiredness.

11. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute LENGTH Languages around the world contain vowels and consonants which take relatively longer to produce than others. This phenomenon is known as length. Length is indicated by a colon /:/ placed after the sound segment. We can also deliberately lengthen or shorten an utterance in order to change the message we want to convey. If we lengthen a word, for example, we place emphasis on it; if we shorten it, we take emphasis away from it.

12. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WORD STRESS AND SENTENCE STRESS The term stress encompasses the combined effects of pitch, loudness and length. Notice the stress changes when you say ‘an export’ versus to ‘export’. Students benefit from this kind of knowledge about word and sentence stress. This kind of information will help students avoid communication breakdowns. Word Stress refers to vowels or syllables which are perceived as more prominent than others within a word. Three levels of word stress are commonly recognized. They are: strongly stressed, lightly stressed, and unstressed syllables. The three levels of stress are otherwise known as primary stress, secondary stress, and tertiary stress. The three levels of stress are marked in IPA with diacritics. /΄/ is used before the syllable to indicate strongly stressed syllables, / ͅ / is used before the syllable to indicate lightly stressed syllables, and unstressed syllables are not marked.

13. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Word stress may be difficult for language learners to master because English vocabulary items stem from a variety of roots and the words sometimes maintain the stress patterns of their place of derivation. Most often, however, words which have been adopted by the English language are assigned the common Germanic stress pattern which involves moving the stress to an earlier syllable. Consider the French word ‘grammaire’ and its English counterpart ‘grammar’. Sentence stress refers to the stressed elements of a sentence. Sentence stress in English follows a regular rhythmic beat therefore English is a stress-timed language. This means that the length of an utterance depends on the number of stresses in that utterance, not on the number of syllables it contains as in Spanish and Japanese.

14. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 2. WORD AND SENTENCE STRESS Correct the student errors with word and sentence stress and write what you would say to them to explain their error. A. I am participating in a contest (stress on second syllable) this weekend. B. He did it himself (stress on first syllable). C. I’ll see you tomorrow (stress on every syllable). D. I’ll see you next week (with rising intonation). E. Where’s the class (with rising intonation)? F. Do you know where the class is (with falling intonation)? G. It’s nice to meet you (each syllable pronounced equally). H. It’s a pretty (producing /t/ twice) doll. I. I finished (long pause here) my homework and watch TV.

15. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute 3. EXPRESSING EMOTION CORRECTLY USING SUPRASEGMENTALS Describe in detail how specific suprasegmentals could be used to express the following emotions, when saying the sentence “It’s cold outside”: A. Happiness B. Anger C. Frustration D. Sadness E. Exhaustion F. Fear G. Excitement H. Nervousness

16. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute TEACHING SUPRASEGMENTALS There are a variety of techniques that can be used to teach suprasegmentals. Teachers can use chants, nursery rhymes, and poetry to expose students to clear suprasegmental patterns. Some teachers enjoy using chants in the classroom because they are highly memorable and motivational. It is important to note that chants are successful learning tools only if the teacher displays and transmits enthusiasm for them. Students can listen to the teacher or a recording, produce utterances then attempt to approximate what they hear. Teachers should also provide feedback and instruction as required.

17. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Teachers can explain intonation and stress patterns to the students and illustrate the patterns with charts. Alternatively, teachers can set the students up to discover the patterns on their own through careful examination of audio and visual examples. Students can also participate in exercises where they listen to a sentence and circle the correct answer. An example of an exercise aimed at improving stress is below. 1. I’ve always wanted a a. GREEN HOUSE (a house painted green) b. GREEN HOUSE (a glass house for plants) 2. My brother is a successful a. HEAD DOCTOR (a chief of staff) b. HEAD DOCTOR (psychiatrist)

18. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Well thought out dialogues and role plays are also helpful. Teachers can provide students with a model of a dialogue with stress indicated. The model below indicates three levels of stress. Then, the teacher can give each student a different profession and have them mingle to find out what their peers’ assigned professions are by following the model. A: WHAT do you DO? B: I’m a DOCtor/ and I WORK in a HOSpital B: WHAT do YOU DO? (addressing C) C: I’m a proFESsor/ and I LECture at the UniVERsity.

19. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Authentic materials can be helpful when practicing suprasegmentals. Students can practice word or sentence stress by identifying the stressed syllables or words in limericks, jokes, comics, or advertisements. They can listen to their teacher or a recording of the text, then mark the stress on their paper, they can also practice saying the text with a partner then present it to the class. Alternatively, students can seek out a joke in their own time and practice saying it before class, then tell the joke to the class. For example: Question: What happens when you play a country music song backward? Answer: You get your wife back, your job back, your money back, your house back, your truck back…

20. ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 4 in your Task Journal. Task Journals can be submitted via email to paula@llinstitute.com (preferred) or printed and handed in. paula@llinstitute.com