Teaching Archives - Pronunciation Studio: Recent Episodes
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English Intonation – 5 Tips
Last week, I released a new course book – The Sound of English Intonation, designed to help learners improve both their stress and use of pitch in English (try a sample here). Stress and intonation can be difficult for teachers and learners of English to approach in the classroom and this course is designed to provide a practical path through them.
With stress, you have to learn the rules of sentence stress for the subject to make any sense. These can seem confusing, but are actually quite simple.
With intonation patterns, it can take a while to hear and produce them accurately in different sentence structures. With repetition and exposure, it’s normally possible for learners to master these.
Don’t wait to include intonation in pronunciation courses!I have found that covering the basics of stress and intonation in courses from the very beginning, when learners are working on pronunciation, is highly beneficial.
Over time, both choosing and producing stress gets easier, and using English pitch and intonation patterns become more natural for most learners.
So here are 5 tips to help with this process, not in order of importance, but probably in the order they should be taught:
1) Learn how to stress*Most of us have such a clear idea of what stress is, that we never actually stop to think about what we actually DO*** when we stress.
It’s three things: volume (louder), pitch (normally higher), vowel quality (normally longer). Applying these in words and sentences is essential for all learners of English.
2) Find the Tonic SyllableMany languages have flatter intonation than English. Students will normally import their mother tongue’s intonation into their pronunciation, so it’s essential that learners locate the main stress in every utterance, and then stress.
Really stress it.
I mean REALLY stress it.
3) Learn Tone UnitsA Tone Unit is basically a chunk of intonation. It always has a Tonic Syllable, and it can have a Pre-Head, Head and Tail.
It is quite a theoretical way of learning intonation, but it nearly always gives results because it allows learners to approach their speech with a real structure, and from this stems control.
4) RapThe PRE-HEAD is probably the hardest part of the tone unit for most learners. Why? Because in so many languages, you start with some stress. Not in English, anything with weak vowels at the beginning needs to be weak. I mean REALLY weak, and this isn’t natural to many learners. The best approach to learning this? Rap:
1 to the 2 to the 3 to the shops. 5) Ignore MeaningThe goal in teaching intonation is to give learners control over their stress and pitch. I’ve seen teachers many times get stuck in long, rambling descriptions of how one tone means this, and another means that.
But intonation isn’t grammar, there isn’t such a strong relationship between what we say, and what it means. So my advice is this – don’t go there. Learn and teach the tools to control the way you sound. Leave the meaning to the words.
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So there you have it, if you follow these 5 tips, and invest a bit of time in doing repetition and a bit of theory, this is how you can improve your intonation skills.
The Sound of English Intonation is out now – click here for a sample.
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RP (Received Pronunciation) vs SSB (Standard Southern British) vs GB (General British)As pronunciation teachers, we are often asked about the accent model we use in class. Unfortunately, the accent has 3 widely used names:
- RP / Modern RP – Received Pronunciation
- SSB – Standard Southern British
- GB – General British
In practice, they are the same – if you are considering pronunciation courses and you’re not sure which one is right for you – it makes no practical difference whether the course is Modern RP, SSB, or GB.
However, the name might indicate the background and approach of the course provider. In this article, each name has a video explainer where you can hear the accents and learn about their histories.
RP / Modern RP – Received PronunciationReceived Pronunciation was spoken by middle and upper class English people in the 20th century.It was taught in private schools and was strongly associated with a certain authority and prestige. It sounds old-fashioned, even absurd these days.
Some ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers still use the term, often with ‘Modern’ attached at the beginning. This is likely because they are familiar with RP from their teacher training days.
SSB – Standard Southern BritishStandard Southern British is popular with phoneticians as a modern alternative to RP. It’s the model described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.SSB is potentially confusing in its use of the terms ‘Standard’ and ‘Southern’ which are both difficult to accurately define.
Estuary English and MLE (Multicultural London English) are more widespread in the same areas of England as SSB.
GB – General BritishGeneral British (GB) was coined in the 70s as an alternative to General American (GA). Controversial name as Britain consists of Scotland, Wales and England, each with their own accents.
Popular in British English pronunciation text books such as Gimson’s Pronunciation of English and English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice. GB is the name used on Pronunciation Studio course materials.
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Should we teach ‘Hard Attack‘?The terminology around English phonetics can seem frustratingly vague or inprecise, particularly for those who want to use it purely as a learning tool rather than to make an academic study of the subject.
Answers at the bottom of the article.
But this isn’t always the case. Surely nowhere in the English sound system is there a term as vivid as ‘hard attack’.It sounds like a martial arts move.But if you’re imagining people flying across beautiful scenery in extravagant poses, dream on.This is phonetics. A hard attack in pronunciation terms is when you stop the flow of air in your glottis by bringing the vocal folds together, then you release it as you make the vowel.
So there are two ways of saying the word APPLE:
https://media.pronunciationstudio.com/2023/10/HARD-ATTACK-GLOTTAL-STOP.mp3The first one clearly has hard attack – the vocal folds are closed at the beginning. This gives more emphasis to both the vowel sound and the word when the /a/ is released.
So by carrying out hard attack, there is a resulting change, albeit subtle, in the amount of emphasis on the word.
This in itself makes it worth teaching: it does have a communicative function.
I’ve been writing about glottal stops since I started teaching pronunciation over a decade ago. But I must admit, I have never included hard attack in my books and only briefly covered it when teaching connected speech.
Is it time to embrace the hard attack?Sounds painful, doesn’t it?Well, no pain no gain, so I have included it in the new AXNting video on the glottal stop, which details the 3 uses in GB English:
– /t/ Allophone
– Hard Attack
– Glottal Reinforcement
You can see a 20 second clip of the video below:
Of the three uses, the /t/ allophone is by far the most important for learners.
Not only is it now a very natural part of SSB/GB, it’s also a key feature of loads of regional accents – from West Country to Cockney and MLE in London, to Scouse and Geordie in the north, and on to Scottish accents north of the border.
Hard attack is a less obvious feature.Though the process for using it is likely to some extent a conscious decision by the speaker to emphasise a word or speak very clearly.
This last reason sees hard attack being the main occurrence of the glottal stop in old-fashioned RP.
But the best reason for studying it, as with so many speech processes, is surely phonetic awareness, which helps to increase any learners’ control over their speech and results in more detailed listening skills.
It forms a small part of a very large phonetic landscape in English pronunciation.
And it surely can’t hurt.Despite the name.
PHONETIC TERMINOLOGY:
MID (jaw) vs CENTRAL (tongue).
VOICELESS vs UNVOICED (same meaning, but phoneticians seem to prefer the first term).
CLOSE (jaw is not open) vs NEAR (can refer to jaw or tongue near to a position such as ‘near-front’ or ‘near-close’).
BROAD (basic) vs NARROW (detailed) – both refer to phonetic transcriptions.
PHONEMIC (/ /) vs PHONETIC ([ ]) – a transcription is either phonemic or phonetic.
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So what is the difference between SHIIP and SHeeP?
Last week I asked Pronunciation Studio’s Instagram followers whether they consider SHIP or SHEEP to be longer, or whether they are roughly the same length. Here are the results:The answer I was hoping for was 3) Similar Length.
In pronunciation teaching I normally encourage learners to ignore the length of vowel sounds and to focus instead on mouth position. Most importantly of all – the position of the tongue.One of my favourite moments in class is when we say SHIIIIIP with a really long sound and realise that it hasn’t miraculously grown legs, walked onto land and started bleating. It’s still a boat no matter how long you make the vowel sound. This is proof that vowel length matters less than position.
The same is true if you invert this – make the sound in SHEEP really short and the woolly mammal doesn’t suddenly take to the high seas.
No.So tongue position is the main feature that distinguishes the sounds. But were 83% of our followers wrong about the length? Is SHEEP not only a different position but also a longer sound?
Well, there’s only one way to find out. Here’s me saying them into a microphone:
https://media.pronunciationstudio.com/2023/05/ship-sheep.mp3As you can see, the lengths are 0.415 seconds for SHIP and 0.416 seconds for SHEEP. A close call indeed.
But this is a small sample size, and I may deliberately lengthen SHIP and shorten SHEEP just to prove my point, I’m capable of worse. So let’s see what the dictionaries do, here’s Oxford Learner Dictionary (OED):
https://media.pronunciationstudio.com/2023/05/ship-sheep-oed.mp3So the OED has SHEEP slightly longer (we’re talking 16% here).
How about Cambridge dictionary:
https://media.pronunciationstudio.com/2023/05/ship-sheep-cambridge.mp3so again we’re seeing a slightly longer (13% to be precise) pronunciation of SHEEP.
So it’s fair to say that SHEEP is longer than SHIP, and so I will grudgingly agree with the 1456 people who voted for it. However, I agree more with the 206 people who voted for Similar Length!
Enough splitting hairs for today (or should that be wool)?
B(AAAAA)Y
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How Long is an English Vowel Sound? Here's a moment most students and teachers of English pronunciation will be familiar with: Well, let’s test that answer: you are now going to hear 6 words, each one will either be SHIP or SHEEP, all you need to do is decide which [...]
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Received Pronunciation vs General British [ssba] An English teacher recently wrote to us probing on why we are using the term ‘GB English’ (GB) instead of ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP), commenting that if the set of sounds we are using is the same as RP, it should keep the name. So what is the difference? It’s really quite [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by German Speakers If your mother tongue is German, you may find certain sounds in English more difficult than others. Here we present to you some of the common errors made by German-speaking students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. /e/ and /æ/ Some German speakers of English confuse the sounds /e/ and [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Thai Speakers [ssba] If your mother tongue is Thai, you may find certain sounds in English more difficult than others. Here we present to you some of the common errors made by Thai-speaking students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. /l/ vs. /r/ Thai speakers of English often confuse the lateral [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Korean Speakers [ssba] What are the main errors for Korean speakers in English pronunciation? Here we have highlighted the top ten experienced by Korean speaking students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. /iː/ and /ɪ/ Korean students often find it difficult to distinguish between the vowel positioning in /iː/ as in [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Portuguese Speakers [ssba] What are the main errors for Portuguese speakers in English pronunciation? Here we have highlighted some of the common errors experienced by Portuguese and Brazilian students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. th The 'th' sounds /θ/ and /ð/ do not occur in Portuguese, which means that Portuguese-speakers may commonly [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Greek Speakers [ssba] If your mother tongue is Greek, you may find certain sounds in English more difficult than others. Here we present to you some of the common errors made by Greek-speaking students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. /s/ vs. /ʃ/ Greek-speakers often find it difficult to produce [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Russian Speakers What are the main errors for Russian speakers in English pronunciation? Here we have highlighted the top ten experienced by students at Pronunciation Studio in the areas of vowels, consonants, stress and intonation. The audio is firstly a likely Russian speaker pronunciation, followed by GB English: 1. Vowel Sounds Russian [...]
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[ssba] 7 Pronunciations of 'OUGH' This absolute gem of a spelling has caused many an English student to tear their hair out, as the pronunciation varies so much! So I’m here to clarify with seven common pronunciations of < ough >: 1. Adding a < t > at the end makes /ɔ:t/ bought /bɔ:t/ [...]
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10 English Pronunciation Errors by Mandarin Speakers [ssba] If your mother tongue is Mandarin, you may find certain sounds in English more difficult than others. Here we present to you some of the common errors made by Mandarin-speaking students at Pronunciation Studio: 1. /l/ vs. /r/ Mandarin-speakers often find it difficult to [...]
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