UNIVERSIDAD TECNICA PARTICULAR DE LOJA
ENGLISH PHONOLOGY: Pronunciation
Second bimester assignment
Student: David Vasquez
TERM DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES
STRESS Stress is a prominence relation
between syllables; certain
syllables are longer, lauder,
higher-pitched, or more clearly
articulated than those around
them (Fasold. R,2006). In other
words, stress is an emphatic or
more prominent and for stress
syllable we have three features:
loudness, pitch change and a
longer syllable.
Example: QUIet – SPEcial.
WORD STRESS Words are formed with one,
two, three until seven syllables.
One of those syllables will sound
louder than the others, stress
can fall on the first, middle or
last syllable of words, so the
stress placement may also have
a grammatical function –
changing the stress to another
syllable can change the part of
speech or the meaning of the
word.
Examples: (Energy, three
syllables, stress in the first
syllable ‘Ooo’)(multiCULturalism,
seven syllables, stress in the
middle ‘o.O…o’)(PREsent two
syllables, stress in thefirst
syllable a noun meaning ‘a
gift’/preSENT, stress in the
second syllable now a verb
meaning ‘to present someone or
something’.)
CLASS ACTIVITIES
Exercise 1. First activity in a class
of children between 10 to 12
years old, we will use shapes and
colors, to identify which syllables
are stress or unstressed.
1. Write 10 words, 2
columns of 5 each one.
2. Then choose a shape
circles or squares
3. The important thing is
the bigger shape
represent the stress
syllable and the small
ones represent
unstressed syllable.
4. The whole class will try
to identify with a specific
color and shape the
stress syllable for the
first column 5 words.
5. Then in their notebooks
do the same with the
second column, to be
more independent.
6. Finally in two groups
repeat the
pronunciation.
Example:
Happiness
Exercise 2. Second activity, we
will do a physic method, because
when you do something, you can
remember easily. (the same
group of age)
1. We can use the same

SENTENCES STRESS Now we know where to put the
stress on each individual word in
English, however you need to
know which words to stress as
part of the sentence as a whole.
This is how English stress
patterns are related to the
rhythm of English and help
create the ‘music’ of a language.
In fact English speakers tend to
put an emphasis on the most
important words in a sentence in
order to draw the listener’s
attention to them. The most
important words are the words
that are necessary for the
meaning of the sentence. Word
stress is important for clarity.
(nouns and verbs are the most
important parts of a sentence,
adjectives, adverbs and
conjunctions add more
information but they are not
absolutely necessary to
understand the meaning)
Example:
THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT
WHILE EATING ITS FAVORITE
FOOD.
words on the board for
the next activity
‘clapping’.
2. In pairs they will
practice but this time
clapping the syllables.
3. Don’t forget, the stress
syllable clapping one
another very hard, and
in unstressed syllable
clapping individually.
Example:
Pronunciation
Exercise 1. This activity is for
advance levels so first the
instructions will be very clear:
The name of the game is
“Telegrams”: explain a telegram
was something like a precursor
to a text message—a message in
which all the structure words or
were deleted: “Mom sick. Come
home.” Give out a page of
“telegrams.” Have students add
the structure words and practice
reading with appropriate
sentence stress.
In two groups try to do very fast
this exercise then show the
message to the class and try to
conduct this activity and focus in
the sentence stress. You can
change this activity with popular
songs, it depends of the teacher
and the group that you have.
Exercise 2. Now we have a
listening activity so explain what
we have to do, Give the students
 ‘The most important words here the tape script to a listening
are: ‘cat’, ‘mat’, ‘eating’ and before they hear it and ask them
‘food’. Even if you only heard to predict which words they
those words, you would still be think will be stressed. Play the
able to understand what was tape to check the predictions.
happening in the sentence from Play a fairly short listening
hearing which words are extract, maybe a paragraph in
stressed. length, students write down the
Clearly, it is the nouns and verbs important (stressed) words they
that are the most important hear. You can play the tape
parts of the sentence, as these several times. Discuss with
are the ‘content words’ that students the aim of this activity -
help with meaning’. to show how native speakers
listen and understand the
FUNCTION WORDS Function words, which are language, taking note of the
structural such as auxiliary verbs, important words, usually
pronouns, articles and stressed ones, and using their
prepositions because these knowledge of the language to
words help us to make our build meaning.
sentences grammatically
correct. Since function words
don't give us the main
information.
Examples: are, was, were, it, the,
some, any, I, he, they.
CONTENT WORDS They are words that have
meaning like: nouns, main verb,
adjectives and sometimes
adverbs). These words help us
form a picture in our head; they
give us the contents of our story
and tell our listener where to
focus his or her attention.
Examples: Milk, cars, run, draw,
quickly, slowly.
RHYTHM When someone speaks in Exercise 1.For this activity, we
English, the speaker alternates will use flash cards for animals,
between stressed and and form a rhythm.
unstressed syllables in regular 1. On the board put the
intervals, with the stresses falling flash cards and draw a
within content words. This is music notes symbols like
called the Rhythm Rule. this:
Examples:
 Doit as you planned, I’d
choose to stay at home.
 Whois the woman on the
phone? You’ll have to
 call her again.
 Tellthem why you don’t
agree, Do remem
 I will find the keys for
you, and you must finda
place to park the car.

2. Then you can compose a

lot of rhythm s and you
can use more animals,
increase the level, and
depend of the
vocabulary of the unit.

Exercise 2. In this activity we

made a quick test, 3 questions
and 3 possible answers.

Questions
1. How many dogs do you
have?
2. I’ve been to Paris
3. Why do you learn
English?

Before to show the possible

answers the teacher read,
obviously with stress and
rhythm, so the students try to
predict the possible answers.

Answers:

1. I have, too
2. I have to
3. I have two
In conclusion in this exercise the
native speakers stress some
words and the others not, so
automatically they produce the
 rhythm and show the meaning
that they want to express.

UNIVERSIDAD TECNICA PARTICULAR DE LOJA

ENGLISH PHONOLOGY: Pronunciation

Second bimester assignment
Student: David Vasquez

a. Intonation and its functions

INTONATION definition
Intonation refers to the way the voice goes up and down in pitch when we speaking, intonation helps to
express and understand our own thoughts and ideas. In fact use melody and includes rise and fall of
voice when speaking, so ‘the term INTONATION refers to linguistic uses of pitch to convey meaning at
the sentence or discourse level’. (Fasold, R. 2006)
FUNCTIONS OF INTONATION
Grammatical Attitudinal Discourse Accentual
Definition: They are Definition: In this Definition: It Definition: It refers of
directly related, function helps us contributes to the the emphasizing the
Intonation can covey express emotions, communicative value of words which are more
grammatical meaning of feelings, and attitudes a speech, you can important to the
a sentence, so the as we speak, so analyzed two points of meaning of an
function of intonation intonation reflects the view, the learner’s utterance.
works like a attitude or emotional attention and Examples:
punctuation, divides state of the speaker. regulation of . I want to know where
subject and predicate in Examples: conversational he’s \travelling to.
a sentence. behavior.
Examples: .Stop \talking. Examples: Note: The word “to” is a
.Shall we go ↑ Note: Fall tone – it .He’ll be v TWENTY in p preposition here, not a
tomorrow? means “finality” or ↓ AUGUST. lexical word, therefore
.Where shall we “definiteness” .He’ll be↓ TWENTY in r it is not stressed.
go↓tomorrow? . Can you /help me? V AUGUST.
Note: The rule in the Note: Rise tone – Most Note: In the first .I don’t want to know
yes/no questions are functions attributed to sentence the listener is where he’s travelling
rising intonation, rises are nearer to told of when a mutual \/from.
wh/questions are falling grammatical than acquaintance will have
tone. attitudinal. his twentieth birthday, Contrastive placement
.They are coming on↓ Listing – /Red, /brown, whereas in second one Note: In a similar way,
Tuesday↓aren’t they? /yellow, or \blue (note the date is already the stressed can be
.They are coming on↓ the fall on the last item known and the listener place in other positions
Tuesday↑aren’t they? of enumeration; that is is told how old the for the purpose of
Note: in tag questions normal) acquaintance will be in emphasis. Below are
depend of the attitude August. two examples, the first
of the speaker. Encouraging – It won’t Notices that the is non-emphatic and the
/hurt. referring tones allow second is emphatic.
speakers to call on
Note: Rise-fall tone – it shared knowledge and
means “surprise” or opinions, which have
“being impressed” not so far been
verbalized in the
conversation.

b. Differences between Spanish and English intonation patterns and examples

Spanish
1. In Spanish nouns are masculine or
feminine (there also is a less-used neuter
gender), and adjectives or pronouns must
match in gender the nouns they refer to.
Even inanimate objects can be referred to
as ella (she) or él (he).
2. Spanish takes a different approach to
conjugation: Although it also uses
auxiliaries, it extensively modifies verb
endings to indicate person and tense. Even
without resorting to auxiliaries, which also
are used, most verbs have more than 30
forms in contrast with the three of English.
For example, among the forms of hablar
(to speak) are hablo (I speak), hablan (they
speak), hablarás (you will speak), hablarían
(they would speak), and hables
(subjunctive form of "you speak").
English
1. In English, only people, animals and a few
nouns, such as a ship that can be referred
to as "she," have gender. Even in those
cases, the gender matters only with
pronoun use; we use the same adjectives
to refer to men and women.
2. English has a few changes in verb forms,
adding "-s" or "-es" to indicate third-
person singular forms in the present tense,
adding "-ed" or sometimes just "-d" to
indicate the simple past tense, and adding
"-ing" to indicate continuous or
progressive verb forms. To further indicate
tense, English adds auxiliary verbs such as
"has," "have," "did" and "will" in front of
the standard verb form.

c. Class activities to teach INTONATION to EFL students

Exercise 1. In this exercise we put ONE LINE emotional practice, it is a fun and effective way for students
to practice English intonation. It will help students learn how intonation can be used to express
emotions, feelings and attitudes in English.

For this activity, assign each student a specific emotion or feeling (such as “excitement,” “fear,”
“sadness,” “confusion” and so on, just like in the popular kids’ movie “Inside Out”) and have them
communicate using the emphasis and pitch that reflects their feeling.

For beginner classes, you might want to create the sentences (or pull from the resources mentioned
above) beforehand in order to save class time. But for your intermediate and advanced classes, feel free
to have them come up with their own sentences that coincide with their assigned emotion.
Exercise 2. Put your students in groups of two or three and give them a number of different stages, such
as:
Meeting a friend for the first time in years
A couple breaking up
Arguing with a stranger
A doctor and a very sick patient
Every stage has a different type of emotion that can be expressed through intonation. Reconnecting
with a friend should have an intonation that demonstrates excitement or happiness, while arguing with
someone would be sarcastic or angry.

You can let students discuss and prepare in groups and then perform one by one for the class, or simply
call up volunteers to improvise together. Depending on your class’ proficiency level, you may want to
have some general lines written out that students can build off of.

Keep each role-play brief (just a couple of minutes) so that the focus stays on intonation. Afterwards,
students can pose questions or discuss what they heard and how they might’ve changed their own
intonation.

Exercise 3. English Poems to following the instructions:

Choose a short extract from a poem that you like (about 4 - 8 lines).

Work out the number of syllables and decide which ones are stressed. Mark the syllable pattern on the
board showing unstressed syllables as dots and stressed syllables as boxes.

Teach the poem to the class by saying it yourself and getting learners to remember and repeat it, line by
line - but without writing the text on the board.

Be careful with the intonation; when you read it, offer a consistent model. Learning a poem in this way
is challenging - but they may come away with something they'll remember all their lives!