Practicing Intonation

Sentence stress, sometimes called the music of language is given the name of intonation. Sentences contain a regular pattern of stressed words just as words themselves have stressed syllables. The voice also has a tendency to rise, fall or remain flat when saying different types of sentences and phrases.

Although the full description of intonation patterns is very complicated, here we will attempt to explain some of the basic points:

• As part of each tone group there will be the usual English mixture of stressed (as in strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables. An example of this would be:

- It was the best car for them to buy.

• One syllable within the tone group will be even more strongly stressed than the others and this is known as the nuclear syllable which carries the main focus of the information or any new information. Here is the example:

- It was the best car for them to buy. (with buy being the nuclear syllable).

Further examples are:

-We looked at the hatchback. (The hatchback is new information.)
-The hatchback was old. (The hatchback is giving information as in the word old)

• The normal place for the nuclear syllable is on the last lexical word in the tone group. An example of this is as follows:

-The car had a lot of rust in it.

• The nuclear syllable, however, can appear in other places if for example the sense requires it to be so.

A normal placement would be

-Sarah was wearing that red jacket.

A contrastive placement would be

-Sarah was wearing that red jacket. (not a black one)
-Sarah was wearing that red jacket. (a particular jacket previously referred to)

-Sarah was wearing that red jacket. (wearing it not carrying it)
-Sarah was wearing that red jacket. (when someone had said she wasn't)
-Sarah was wearing that red jacket. (it was Sarah wearing it not someone else)

• The nuclear syllable should always sound louder than any other stressed syllables and usually has a change of pitch. You really need to listen to the intonation pattern of English sounds by native speakers.

You can also hear sentences and the phrasal stresses which are used in the last content word of each thought group. Listen to it two times, but the first time don't listen to the content, only to the language itself. Take in the end of sentence intonation and listen to the strongest stress closest to the end of the sentence. When you listen to it after this take note of the content. You never know, it may prove to be an interesting subject to you.

You are advised also to listen to news, commentaries and true stories or to listen to different passages with text where you can hear other accents.

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