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USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN THE INTONATION
CLASSROOM
Marina López Casoli and Ricardo Gustavo Paderni
Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina
mlcuniv@gmail.com; rpaderni@mdp.edu.ar
ABSTRACT
Teaching intonation can be a daunting task given
the complexity of English intonation and students’
difficulty in trying to understand, internalize and
use it effectively. For many years, traditional
pedagogical practices have consisted in students
either drilling isolated pieces of spoken discourse
and/or being exposed to artificially-designed audio
materials meant for TEFL.
This paper describes the practical experience of
two teachers of English intonation with sophomore
students at an Argentine university, following
Barbara Bradford’s approach to practising
intonation but using an authentic piece of spoken
English (a weekly radio program on BBC). The
purpose of this paper is to offer EFL educators
strategies to teach intonation through real audio
materials and to make them aware of the
importance of exposing our students to this kind of
materials if we wish them to use English intonation
more effectively.
Keywords: intonation, free practice, authentic
materials, spontaneous oral discourse, TEFL.
1. INTRODUCTION
Although a whole body of literature on the
description of English intonation has been
available for and used with EFL learners
(O’Connor & Arnold [3], Brazil [2], Tench [7],
Wells [8]), not as much has been published on the
practice of this aspect of pronunciation in a free
and spontaneous discourse. Given the common
perception that “intonation is an immensely
difficult and complicated subject” that is “not
teachable and possibly not learnable either” [5] or
that “it can be best acquired by a long-term
exposure to the target language” [4], many times
the teaching of intonation is limited to explaining
in detail the theory underlying English intonation
to raise learners’ awareness and sensitivity about
the way English speakers use this prosodic aspect.
In the course Oral Discourse II at Universidad
Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina, we felt the
need to find a better link between the theory that
students are taught and the actual practice they
have. For a long time many of the exercises
students did in the course consisted of simple and
long-established “listen and repeat” tasks and the
use of unauthentic materials that aimed at helping
students internalize the different intonation
patterns with the hope that they would eventually
be used by the learners. Without dismissing this
traditional methodology, we wanted to go beyond
it and design activities in which learners are
exposed to authentic material and can apply the
theory to scenarios in which they do not merely
recognise and analyse the different intonation
patterns used in real life, but actually produce them
in spontaneous speech.
The framework for designing the activities was
adapted from the approach used by Barbara
Bradford [1]. In this approach, the different stages
of “sensitisation,” “explanation,” “practice,” and
“imitation” pave the way to the final stage, i.e.
“communication,” in which students work hands
on with the features of intonation they have studied
without having to produce specific or controlled
answers.
2. INTEGRATING THEORY INTO
PRACTICE
2.1.
Method
2.1.1. Setting and subjects
Oral Discourse II is an 8-hour weekly course in
which students are trained in the theory and
practice of English intonation. The activities
described here were designed for a two-hour
practical class following the 5 stages of Barbara
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Bradford’s approach to practising conversational
discourse by retelling an anecdote. One hour is
taught to the whole group of students in the
classroom. Another hour is taught in an audio lab
in smaller groups, which allows the teacher to
monitor the students’ performance individually as
well as make interventions and corrections as they
practise. In the lab the students also work in pairs
monitoring and offering feedback to each other.
The classroom and lab classes are taught
consecutively.
2.1.2. Activities
Activity 1: The first activity starts in the classroom
setting and it is meant to expose students to a piece
of oral discourse that demonstrates different
intonation features, which Barbara Bradford refers
to as “sensitisation.” In this stage students focus on
the content and context of the audio material
through a set of questions:
1- Listen to Adam Buxton from The Adam & Joe
Show [6], a weekly radio program on BBC,
telling Joe Cornish about a childhood
anecdote. Then, answer the following
questions:
a. Who does Adam talk about?
b. What was the problem?
c. Was the problem solved? How?
d. What is Adam and Joe’s accent? How can
you tell?
e. How is intonation relevant in
understanding the speakers’ ideas, feelings
or attitudes?
Activities 2 and 3: The next activities in the
classroom consist of having students identify
different aspects and/or features of intonation and
explain the speakers’ intonation choices by
referring to the theoretical concepts they have
studied so far (Bradford’s “explanation” stage):
2- Your teacher will divide the class into groups
and assign to each a passage of the anecdote’s
script (one group will only focus on Joe’s
interventions). With your group, listen again
while you read your passage. Mark and discuss
the following aspects of the speakers’
intonation:
 Tone: intonation patterns used by the
speakers to ask questions, clarify/correct
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ideas, make exclamations, state facts/narrate
events, etc.
 Tonality (chunking)
 Tonicity (prominence and non-prominence,
broad/narrow focus)
3- Share your group’s findings with the rest of the
class justifying them with the theory on
prosody studied so far.
In the following sample from the recording,
students are expected to identify, for instance, the
narrow focus on a personal pronoun, the use of the
implicational fall-rise, of a falling tone in a whquestion, of a mid-level tone for non-finality, and
of a leading non-fall tone, among other intonation
features:
“Adam: Yeah…and he said ‘where did you
get this gum? I didn’t buy you any chewing
gum. You’re not allowed gum’. And I…I
>said: ‘It was on…uh…I got it in…it was
on…it was on the floor, it was broken!’ And
he >said: ‘You’ve just stolen something!
This is stealing, Adam. You stole this! You
didn’t pay for it! We could go to prison! If
the police foundout, you could go to
prison’.”
Activity 4: The next stage in Bradford’s approach
is “imitation,” which consists in students repeating
a section of the audio material presented in the
sensitisation stage to focus on and practise the
intonation feature(s) observed in Activities 2 and 3.
In order to do this, students work in the lab in
individual booths where they record a passage and
repeat at intervals while the teacher monitors their
performance:
4-
Record a passage from Adam and Joe’s script
and try to imitate their accent, focusing
particularly on their intonation.
Activity 5: Bradford then moves into the “practice
activities,” which allow students to produce the
features of intonation observed in context:
5-
The teacher gives the students a script form
another section of the anecdote and tells them
they have to mark tone, tonality and tonicity
based on the theory and discussions they have
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worked so far. Then, the teacher plays the
recording and tells the students to compare
their choices with the ones made by the actual
speakers. Finally, the students share their
findings and discuss those choices that,
without being necessarily wrong, do not
coincide with the ones used by the speakers in
the recording.
Activity 6: The
“communication”
continue practising
intonation pointed
classmate:
last activity (part of the
stage) allows students to
in a freer style the features of
out while interacting with a
6a. Individually, write brief notes about a
childhood anecdote in which you learned a
lesson. Do not write the complete story but
simply jot down notes or key words in
chronological order. Make sure you do not
share this anecdote with your classmates yet.
Have a look at the notes on your anecdote and
take a few seconds to think about how you
would tell a partner about it.
b. The teacher will set you up in random pairs to
record your anecdote. Student A will retell the
anecdote while Student B makes appropriate
interventions.
c. Once you finish retelling, switch roles with
your partner, who will now tell you about
his/her anecdote while you make interventions.
Do not stop the recording.
d. When both students are finished, stop the
recording. Each student should listen to his/her
own part again and self-assess his oral
discourse. The teacher will monitor your work.
e. Now, listen to your partner’s part and assess
his/her oral discourse. Provide him/her with
feedback. The teacher will monitor your work.
3. CONCLUSIONS
The activities outlined above have proved to be
very useful in helping students integrate theory
into practice in different ways. On the one hand,
they help students not only to identify and analyse
the speakers’ intonation choices from a theoretical
standpoint, but they also help them to apply the
theory in controlled identification and repetition
activities and move toward others that require them
to produce the intonation features studied.
On the other hand, students have benefited
more from listening to authentic pieces of oral
discourse as opposed to artificially-designed audio
materials. The former expose students to real
intonation models that can more effectively help
them integrate theory into practice and produce
spontaneous speech in real contexts. In addition,
using real exponents of the language is always
more enticing for students as they are assured that
the intonation they are trying to imitate is what
actually occurs in real life.
Finally, following Bradford’s approach has
helped students to transition gradually from one
stage to the next of their learning of English
intonation. The step-by-step approach gives time
for students to become aware of intonation
subtleties and produce them themselves.
4. REFERENCES
[1] Bradford, B. 1988. Intonation in Context. Student’s book,
teacher’s book. Cambridge: CUP.
[2] Brazil, D. 1997. The Communicative Value of Intonation
in English. Cambridge: CUP.
[3] O’Connor, J.D, Arnold, G. F. 1973. Intonation of
Colloquial English. 2nd ed. London: Longman.
[4] Roach, P.J. 2009. English Phonetics and Phonology.
Fourth edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5] Taylor, D.S. 1993. Intonation and accent in English: what
teachers need to know. International Review of Applied
Linguistics in Language Teaching 31/1, 1-22.
[6] “Telling Anecdotes.” The Adam and Joe Show. Podcast.
Hosts Adam Buxton & Joe Cornish. Luke’s English Blog.
11 Oct. 2011. 3 Dec.2012. http://teacherluke.podomatic.
com/entry/2009-12-16T01_00_29-08_00
[7] Tench, P. 1996. The Intonation Systems of English.
London: Cassell.
[8] Wells, J.C. 2006. English Intonation: an introduction.
Cambridge: CUP.
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