Kingman, Arizona TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

This unit was an overview of the pronunciation aspect of language. It appears to be very neglected in the classroom, but carries significant weight especially in verbal communication. Intonation, stress, and rhythm all help a speaker to convey their emotions and can even helps to identify the context of a sentence. For example in relation to stress: HE didn't work vs. He DIDN'T work. The first would imply that someone else had worked instead of the person currently being talked about. The second would imply that the person designated in the sentence is the one who didn't work (conveying more of a "they were absolutely useless" meaning) Intonation can help cue the listener, signaling a desire from the speaker for a response. It can also show that the speaker has finished what he/she wants to say in regards to something or even give a hint as to what's coming next (ex. announcers at a professional baseball game. You can kind of predict whether the outcome of the play or game was positive or not based on the tone of their voice). Another thing that may aid students in their quest to achieve native like fluency is the acquisition of the phonemic alphabet. By knowing this, they will be able to utilize their dictionaries to understand the pronunciation of words, as the alphabet is usually written next to the word. There are a few patterns in the English language regarding stress and intonation, but if students can grab a general idea of it, they will be on their way to speaking like a native.