1. Intonation refers to the rises and falls in pitch when speaking and is important for conveying meaning and feelings. 2. Teaching intonation aids communication and prevents misunderstandings that can occur from using the wrong intonation. 3. Examples of intonation patterns include rising intonation for yes/no questions and falling intonation for statements. Teachers should highlight predictable intonation patterns associated with grammar.

1. ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUES TO TEACH
INTONATION
SHAGUFTA MOGHAL

2. WHAT IS INTONATION?
• Intonation is about : how we say things.
• It is impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words.
• Intonation exists in all languages.
• Native-speaker-level is not the goal.
• The pattern of rises and falls in pitch.
• A tool to indicate the feelings of the speaker.

3. WHY TEACH INTONATION?
• Awareness aids communication.
• Wrong intonation causes misunderstanding
• As important as word choice

4. INTONATION AND GRAMMAR
• Where patterns associating intonation and grammar are predictable, highlight
them.
• See them as starting-points, rather than as rules,
• Some example :
• yes/no questions; rising intonation
• statements : falling intonation

5. • Create awareness of the strong link between the two rules are difficult.
• Let learners recognize the effect of intonation changes.
• Utter a word e.g. ‘Coffee’
• Let students practice in pairs, guessing each others attitude.
• We went for a ride in the car.
• I must get my hair cut.
• Help your self.

6. STRESS ABOUT TEACHING ENGLISH
INTONATION
However, stress isn’t something most teachers know how to talk about. There
are 7 tips for teaching English intonation.
1 teach it : intonation is not the most popular topic of instruction in ESL
programs. The first step to teaching your students correct and effective
sentence stress is to bite the bullet and teach it in first place.
2 guess at it : having your students practice sentence stress is the next step in
perfecting its use.

7. CONTI……
3 EXPLAIN IT : help your students understand that stressing different words in a
sentence gives the sentence different meanings.
4 question it : with close examination, you and your students will find that the
word which is stressed is the idea which is in question.

8. CONTI…….
• 5 USE IT : once every person in class has had a chance to practice stressing
different words in the sentence, its time to see if they understand what it
means.
• 6 listen to it : using a short dialogue, have students listen for stressed words
while reading a transcript of the dialogue.
• 7 have fun with it : what can a speaker communicate with only one word? More
than you might think.

9. TEACHING STRESS IN ENGLISH DOESN’T HAVE
TO BE STRESSFUL
• With some patience and practice, your students can begin to understand the
subtleties of English stress and start using it in their own speaking.

10. TECHNIQUES
PITCH
• Pitch refers to the rate of vibration of vocal cords. The higher the vibration, the
higher the pitch. Thus sounds are said with a high pitch, low pitch or a normal pitch.
When speech goes up in frequency, it goes up in pitch.
• We are not interested in all aspects of a speaker’s pitch, butt in those that carry
some linguistic information.
• Speakers have control over their own pitch of voice.
• Significance in linguistics lies in contrast .
• Being under speaker’s control

11. CONTI……….
• Example
• The word is ‘imagination’
• 4 extra high………
• 3 high……………na
• 2 normal…………imagi
• 1 low…………..tion

12. CONTI…….
Normal conversation moves between high and normal pitch with low pitch
typically signalling the end of an utterance.
Extra high level is used to express a strong emotion such as surprise , enthusiasm
, or disbelief and used in contrastive or emphatic stress.

13. TONE
• It is the term used for the overall behaviour of the pitch
• It can be level or moving
• The latter is more common
• Level tone does not sound natural
• When saying yes or no in final manner, falling tones usually used
• Whereas for questioning rising tone is used

14. IMPORTANT DEFINITION (CROMBIE, 1987)
• Tonality: ``dividing the flow of speech into tone groups or tone units``
• Tonicity: ``locating the syllables on which major movements of pitch occur``
• Tone: ``identifying the direction of pitch movements``

15. COMPLEX TONE AND PITCH HEIGHT
• Each of these tones may express particular attitudes:
• Fall: neutral statement
• Rise: neutral question, doubt
• Fall-rise: scepticism
• Rise-fall: emphatic statement
• Level: boredom, disinterest

16. CONTI……….
• In ordinary speech intonation tends to take place within the lower part of the
speaker’s pitch range.
• Only with strong feelings we use extra pitch height.

17. FALLING INTONATION
• The pitch begins to fall on the accented syllable and it continues to fall till the
end of the tone unit.
• Examples
• Assertions, matter of fact statements, finality

18. CONTI……
• Declarative statements (I am going home)
• A (who will help? +Where are you going)
• Exclamations (how beautiful ! what a nice day)
• Imperatives (get out! +Turn the light!)

19. RISING INTONATION
• The pitch begins to rise in the accented syllable and it continues to fall rise till
the end of the tone unit.
• Examples
• Questioning, uncertain, statements

20. CONTI…..
• Yes/no questions ( are you feeling better?)
• Statements to encourage the listener (come on! You can make it)
• Yes-no questions in statement form(he is gone?)
• Incomplete sentences (if you wait here,…..)

21. SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING INTONATION
• 1 teacher must make sure that their students understand the stress patterns
and weak forms.
• Teacher must show learners the relationship between grammatical patterns and
intonation (falling and rising)
• Attitudinal intonation should be introduced contextually so that the learner can
associate between the type of intonation and the spoken attitude.

22. CONTI…..
• Its necessary to produce intonation after native speakers model, tape recorder,
computer and radio.
• Ask learners to listen to a short dialogue while looking at the printed text.