Intonation, rhythm, and stress are a major part of learning how to speak English well. Students should be given plenty of speaking practice during their classes and may occasionally need special lessons devoted to these topics. We have 28 such activities on Busy Teacher. This intonation worksheet, for example, is a well organized role play activity you can use to give your students practice using English in a real life situation. The activity includes all directions and teaching materials including a script.
Intonation, rhythm, and stress become very important topics for advanced learners.
Beginners should be taught what syllable of new words are stressed but are not expected to have excellent intonation or rhythm when it comes to speaking or reading aloud. Advanced learners may have an excellent understanding of English but having incorrect intonation and rhythm when they are speaking will prevent them from coming across that way. Slash reading is an excellent method to practice this with intermediate and advanced learners. For slash reading, have students place slashes where a native speaker would naturally pause. “I have been studying math, / science, / and history / for many years. /” You can also use arrows to give students some guidance too. In the example above the arrows would go down, down, up, and down. These are some very simple approaches to a complex topic.
In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody. Intonation patterns in some languages, such as Swedish and Swiss German, can lead to conspicuous fluctuations in pitch, giving speech a sing-song quality. Fluctuations in pitch either involve a rising pitch or a falling pitch. Intonation is found in every language and even in tonal languages, but the realisation and function are seemingly different. It is used in non-tonal languages to add attitudes to words (attitudinal function) and to differentiate between wh-questions, yes-no questions, declarative statements, commands, requests, etc. Intonation can also be used for discourse analysis where new information is realised by means of intonation. It can also be used for emphatic/contrastive purposes.
Recently added worksheets in Intonation, Rhythm and Stress:
Word Stress in the Sentence
This presentation can help you while teaching stressed syllables of the word and stressed words within the sentence. I have also mentioned the heteronyms (heterophones). I hope it will be useful f ...
Topics:Pronunciation » Intonation, Rhythm and Stress
Intermediate/Advanced Oral Presentation Rubric
Here is a rubric that is designed to help teachers assess prepared oral presentations by students at the Intermediate/Advanced levels. The rubric contains the following categories to be assessed: ...
Pronunciation of the Phonetic Vowels /ai/ and /i/
This worksheet is to identify the difference between the long /ai/ sound and the short /i/ sounds that are otften confused by learners. It can be used to find patterns (e.g. the magic 'e' which tr ...
Practice for Phonetics and Phonology [Advanced Students]
This worksheet is meant for students at advanced levels to practice transcription into IPA and pronunciation. It consists of a series of texts from different authors, including Shakespeare, fairy ...
Idioms & Phonetics
Hello, this is another activity dealing with phonetics symbols, this time it is a text about idioms. The purpose of the task is to choose the correct sound of some words in the text; it's somethin ...
Song Worksheet: Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift
Students like songs. If they have read or seen The Hunger Games, they will like this song. The lyrics are a bit simple but they can revise vocabulary and present simple and future tenses. It's a g ...
Silent Letters in Enlgish Words
This worksheet includes a classification of the silent letters (clusters of letters) in English words between brackets with plenty of examples. It can be useful when students are handicapped by th ...
Speaking: Intonation and Feelings
Includes two different tasks. Explain that 'intonation' is very important in English to show how the speaker is feeling and what his or her attitude is to the listener. Use the example 'really? ' ...
Rhyming Words Worksheet
The students will read the sentences and encircle the words that rhyme with the word in bold font. Sometimes there are two or more rhyming words in the sentence. They may also add more words to t ...
Prepositions of Place
This worksheet provides prompts for students to make their own examples. I ususally have them practice pronunciation and check learning and understanding. They practice a telephone conversation in ...
The Golem of Prague: Pronunciation and Short Stories
Hello, this is the fifth activity of a series to come dealing with pronunciation. These are activities I create to use in class, the stories are taken from http://www.storynory.com from where you ...
Topics:Pronunciation » Intonation, Rhythm and Stress
Pronunciation and Short Stories 1
Hello, this is the first activity of a series to come dealing with pronunciation. These are activities I create to use in class, the stories are taken from http://www.storynory.com from where ...
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