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 45 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.
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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 ...
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: ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
This is a good song to work with daily routines and present simple. It's good to introduce new terms such as comb your hair, put on make up and run for the bus. It is also a good song to introduce ...
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? ' ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
These are a pair of exercises that I have created to tackle certain confusing sounds for the Spanish speaker who is learning English. I'm sure that it can be modified to reflect the needs of your ...
This worksheet provides many activities and simple explanations as to what "The Schwa" is and how to listen for it and produce it. Some of the exercises have been taken and modified from other wor ...
Phonetic alphabet with some examples of pronunciation. Students find it a lot easier when they see the word in normal English and then the equivalent in pronunciation. The phonetic symbols are giv ...
Two activities to revise some basic concepts about phonetics and phonology and the speech mechanism. The exercises are mainly based on Finch and Ortiz Lira's "A Course in English Phonetics for Spa ...
This is a song called "One Headlight" from Wallflowers that works really well to practice as a listening activity and to increase vocabulary.Kids love it because it tells a story and also it's no ...
1. Alliteration is the repetition of a beginning sound to create a certain effect. They may be vowel or consonant sounds. Alliterations appear on only a few words in a poem to highlight or empha ...
FOR PORTUGUESE SPEAKERS:
Description [translated from Portuguese]: The music video is especially interesting and motivating. It inspires young people to overcome their teenage fears and insecurit ...
Using two songs to help your students to get the right pronunciation of the word "because" and have some fun while doing it. the first song might be used as an warm up to the following song and ac ...
With a little bit of preparation, this activity will turn into a great lesson-long project that your young learners will simply love!
They will create a mouse headband and will be happily practic ...
Patty-Cake is a nursery Rhyme lesson plan with several activities and the detailed teacher's notes.
Example instructions:
Hearing the rhythm: After reciting the rhyme, have students clap it so t ...
Great and easy phonetic game! the cards are divided into three levels. you can play with one set of cards or you can mix all of them. and they will have different levels. i have not tried it yet b ...
In this activity students are asked to think of appropriate gestures to illustrate various words, then to actually say several sentences supporting them with corresponding gestures and emphasizing ...
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Intonation, Rhythm and Stress?
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