ORAL ENGLISH
pronunciation
and fluency
PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS FOR
CHINESE STUDENTS
•
•
•
•
•
•
Intonation
stress
articulation
rhythm
consonant clusters
linkage
• The beautiful Mountain appeared
transfixed in the distance.
• He can come on Sundays as long
as he doesn't have to do any
homework in the evening.
Stress
• Often unpredictable in English
• Adds emphasis to words
• Helps define the tone of a sentence
Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such
as …
- Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
- (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct
- Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
- Adverbs e.g. often, carefully
Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such
as …
- Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
- Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were
- Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
- Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
- Pronouns e.g. they, she, us
Sound Scripting
Our school is the BEST in town. The
teachers are friendly, and VERY
KNOWLEDGEABLE about English. I've
studied at the school for two years and
my English is becoming VERY GOOD. I
hope you will visit our school and try an
English class. MAYBE we can become
FRIENDS
1. John is coming over tonight. We are going to
work on our homework together.
2. We should have visited some more castles
while we were traveling through the back
roads of France.
3. Would you like to come over and play a game
of chess?
4. Shakespeare wrote passionate, moving
poetry.
5. As you might have expected, he has just
thought of a new approach to the problem.
INTONATION
• Definition: the pattern or melody of pitch
changes in connected speech, especially
the pitch pattern of a sentence, which
distinguishes kinds of sentences or speakers of
different language cultures.
Intonation continued…
• It is used in non-tonal languages to add
attitudes to words (attitudinal function) and
to differentiate between wh-questions, yes-no
questions, declarative statements, commands,
requests, etc.
Symbols
‘ = stress on word
/ = rising tone
\ = falling tone
\/ = fall/rise
I = short pause
II = long pause
Bold capital letters = extra emphasis
1. \By the time he /receives this LETTER I, I will
have \/caught the TRAIN to \Paris.
2. Following closely behind the herd was a group
of \filthy, \disgusting \vultures.
3. I \love /you!
4. I \hate \English \class.
5. I \love /Huang \/Wei so \much!!
Fire and Ice (Robert Frost)
\ /Some 'say the 'world will 'end in \FIRE, ||
'Some 'say in \ICE. ||
From what I've 'tasted of de\SIRE |
'I 'hold with 'those who 'favor \FIRE. ||
'But | if it had to 'perish \TWICE, |
I 'think I 'know e'nough of \HATE |
To 'know that for de/struction | 'ICE
Is \ALso 'great |
'And would suf\FICE. ||
'say - sentence stress on a content word;
'FIRE - stronger sentence stress on the main word of the
thought group;
'But - emphatic stress;
\FIRE - falling intonation on the main word of the thought
group or on the last stressed word of the sentence;
/TWICE - rising intonation on the main word of the
thought group or on the last stressed word of the sentence;
\TWICE - high fall;
\ /Some, \ /FIRE - fall-rise;
de/struction - midlevel rise within a thought group;
| - short pause between thought groups or parts of the
sentence;
|| - longer pause between sentences.
1. Do you think social media is destroying English
grammar? Why?
2. Is this article promoting internet slang like
'OMG'?
3. Do you agree with Fritz saying “ it makes you
smarter?”
4. What are the pros and cons of slang?
5. How often do you use incorrect grammar (in
Chinese or English)?
6. Find some English slang and tell us what it
means
+ 2 new questions
Articulation
-
SPEECH ORGANS
POINTS OF ARTICULATION
METHODS OF ARTICULATION
VOICING
CAN YOUR PEERS UNDERSTAND YOU?
• 2 LISTS OF 10 WORDS
• EACH WORD IS READ TWICE
• OTHER STUDENTS MUST WRITE DOWN WHAT
THEY THINK THE WORD IS
1 ship
2 mat
3 ball
4 main
5 prize
6 pen
7 tin
8 bed
9 seventy
10 clue
1 sheep
2 mad
3 bowl
4 men
5 price
6 pin
7 teen
8 bet
9 seventeen
10 crew
POINTS OF ARTICULATION
• LIPS
(together) meat
(contact with teeth) fee
(open) all
(rounded) double
(Stretched to corners) eat
(slack) hillbilly
• TEETH
(against a lip) fever
(together) see, ice
(apart) reed, deer
• TONGUE
(between the teeth) thank
(just behind the teeth) sank
(touching the ridge) tease, ridge
METHODS OF ARTICULATION
• FRICATIVES
- When the air may stream continuously
through the lips EX foam, see
• STOPS
- When air may be stopped and then let out in a
single rush EX boo, go
VOICING
•
-
VOICING
Voiced, meaning the vocal cords vibrate
Unvoiced, meaning they do not
The unvoiced sounds in English are /p/, /t/,
/k/, /s/ (everything else is voiced)
• consonants
-“th” sound
- Confusion between /r/ and /l/ sound
- Confusion between /n/ and /l/ sound
• vowels
- English has 5 vowel letters but 13 vowel sounds
EX. ‘ea’ in eat / ‘I’ in ‘it’ / ‘a’ in mate / ‘e’ in met
• Consonant clusters
- Very rare in Chinese
- EX ‘strive’, ‘world’, ‘tackle’, ‘giggle’
Rhyme
1. meat, feet, beat, meet, eat
2. Head, bed, fed, dead
3. Show, glow, slow, blow
4. Yellow, mellow, fellow, bellow
5. Tough, rough, buff, enough
6. Bland, sand, band, demand
7. Tan, man, can, fan
8. Egg, leg
9. Bat, cat, fat, that
10.Rhyme, time, lime, climb
/ei/ and /e/
/l/ - /r/
/I/ - /i:/
a. Main b. men
a. Clue b. crew
a. Mitt b. meet
a. Fail b. fell
a. Loom b. room
a. Still b. steal
a. Cane b. Ken
a. Ply b. pry
a. Bin b. bean
a. Sale b. sell
a. Link b. rink
a. Sin b. seen
a. Pain b. pen
a. Flight b. fright
a. Bid b. bead
a. Bait b. bet
a. Plow b. prow
a. Tin b. teen
a. Tale b. tell
a. Lake b. rake
a. Knit b. neat
Review
1. What does OMG Meiyu (Jessica) want to
accomplish with her videos?
2. Which words are stressed in English?
3. What symbols do you put at the end of a sentence
to indicate a long pause?
4. What symbol usually goes on the word before the
question mark?
5. How do you make the thank sound?
6. How many vowel sounds are there
in English?
7. What words rhyme with bed?
8. What words have the same sound
as the “a” in bat?
9. What words rhyme with orange?
10. What words have the same
sound as the “ue” in true?
FLUENCY
• Definition: Fluency is the property of a person
or of a system that delivers information
quickly and with expertise.
• fluency is necessary but not sufficient for
language proficiency: fluent language users
(particularly uneducated native speakers) may
have narrow vocabularies, limited discourse
strategies, and inaccurate word use
TONGUE TWISTERS
Say this sharply, say this sweetly;
Say this shortly, say this softly;
Say this sixteen times in succession.
Thankfully, the three thousand thirty-three
thoughtful thinkers thoroughly thought their three
thousand and three thoughts through, through
Thursday's thunderous night.
She sells seashells down by
the seashore. The shells
she sells are seashells I’m
sure.