Pronunciation II – Thought Groups

Student’s name: _____________________________ date: ____________

This lesson will help you:

- Understand what Thought Groups are in English pronunciation.
- Develop your awareness of the natural rhythm in English.
- Learn to pause naturally by grouping your words into thoughts.

Contents:
1. Introduction to Thought Groups
2. Recognizing Thought Groups and making chunks correctly when communicating orally

Activity:​ Watch the video (​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRaufMqiaoU​) ​and answer the following questions.

- What are thought groups?

- Why is it important to make chunks correctly when communicating orally?

- What kind of words of phrases can be thought groups?

- How do thought groups usually end?

- Why is it important for you to recognize and learn how to make chunks?

Key information:​ Oftentimes, thought groups will contain a focus word that has more emphasis than the other
words within the phrase. This allows the listener to identify the most important information that is being
communicated.
Thought groups also have their own intonation contours. The rhythm within a thought group is unique. There is
often a change in pitch at the end of the thought group (often falling), and a lengthened last syllable. Try it out
with the sentence below.
“The teacher said, / “That student is really smart!”

Activity: ​practice reading the texts. Make sure you make the chunks where they are indicated.

Activity:​ use slashes (/) to separate or identify the thought groups in the sentences below.

Sometimes when I go to bed I like to read beforehand. This allows my brain to calm down and prepare itself for
sleep. It also helps me because I always overthink before I go to bed and I stress about the details of the next
day.

Activity: ​practice reading out loud the following text. Do it with a partner first and then with the teacher.

The Most Important Meal of The Day!

A healthy breakfast has been proven to have many health benefits. Eating breakfast in the morning gives our
bodies the energy it needs to get through a busy day. Skipping breakfast is like trying to start your car in the
morning without petrol!
Nutritionists all agree; breakfast really is the most important meal of the day! Research shows that
students who eat a healthy breakfast do better at school. They are happier and they have more energy. In
addition to giving us instant energy, it also provides us with important nutrients and vitamins that our bodies
need to function well in the day.

Activity:​ Listen to the audio or video

(​https://www.ted.com/talks/sajan_saini_how_do_self_driving_cars_see/transcript#t-68225​). Then, on the printed-out
version of the transcript, mark out the thought groups with a line for every pause the speaker does. Then,
practice reading making the chunks you marked; try to imitate the original speaker.

Transcript - How do self-driving cars "see"?

00:08 - It’s late, pitch dark, and a self-driving car winds down a narrow country road. Suddenly, three hazards
appear at the same time.
00:18 - What happens next?
00:20 - Before it can navigate this onslaught of obstacles, the car has to detect them— gleaning enough
information about their size, shape, and position, so that its control algorithms can plot the safest course. With
no human at the wheel, the car needs smart eyes, sensors that’ll resolve these details— no matter the
environment, weather, or how dark it is— all in a split-second.
00:45 - That’s a tall order, but there’s a solution that partners two things: a special kind of laser-based probe
called LIDAR, and a miniature version of the communications technology that keeps the internet humming,
called integrated photonics.
01:00 - To understand LIDAR, it helps to start with a related technology— radar. In aviation, radar antennas
launch pulses of radio or microwaves at planes to learn their locations by timing how long the beams take to
bounce back. That’s a limited way of seeing, though, because the large beam-size can’t visualize fine details.
In contrast, a self-driving car’s LIDAR system, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, uses a narrow
invisible infrared laser. It can image features as small as the button on a pedestrian’s shirt across the street.
But how do we determine the shape, or depth, of these features?
01:42 - LIDAR fires a train of super-short laser pulses to give depth resolution. Take the moose on the country
road. As the car drives by, one LIDAR pulse scatters off the base of its antlers, while the next may travel to the
tip of one antler before bouncing back. Measuring how much longer the second pulse takes to return provides
data about the antler’s shape. With a lot of short pulses, a LIDAR system quickly renders a detailed profile.
02:13 - The most obvious way to create a pulse of light is to switch a laser on and off. But this makes a laser
unstable and affects the precise timing of its pulses, which limits depth resolution. Better to leave it on, and use
something else to periodically block the light reliably and rapidly.
02:33 - That’s where integrated photonics come in. The digital data of the internet is carried by precision-timed
pulses of light, some as short as a hundred picoseconds. One way to create these pulses is with a
Mach-Zehnder modulator. This device takes advantage of a particular wave property, called interference.
Imagine dropping pebbles into a pond: as the ripples spread and overlap, a pattern forms. In some places,
wave peaks add up to become very large; in other places, they completely cancel out. The Mach-Zehnder
modulator does something similar. It splits waves of light along two parallel arms and eventually rejoins them. If
the light is slowed down and delayed in one arm, the waves recombine out of sync and cancel, blocking the
light. By toggling this delay in one arm, the modulator acts like an on/off switch, emitting pulses of light. A light
pulse lasting a hundred picoseconds leads to a depth resolution of a few centimeters, but tomorrow’s cars will
need to see better than that. By pairing the modulator with a super- sensitive, fast-acting light detector, the
resolution can be refined to a millimeter. That’s more than a hundred times better than what we can make out
with 20/20 vision, from across a street.
03:57 - The first generation of automobile LIDAR has relied on complex spinning assemblies that scan from
rooftops or hoods. With integrated photonics, modulators and detectors are being shrunk to less than a tenth of
a millimeter, and packed into tiny chips that’ll one day fit inside a car’s lights. These chips will also include a
clever variation on the modulator to help do away with moving parts and scan at rapid speeds.
04:27 - By slowing the light in a modulator arm only a tiny bit, this additional device will act more like a dimmer
than an on/off switch. If an array of many such arms, each with a tiny controlled delay, is stacked in parallel,
something novel can be designed: a steerable laser beam.
04:47 - From their new vantage, these smart eyes will probe and see more thoroughly than anything nature
could’ve imagined— and help navigate any number of obstacles. All without anyone breaking a sweat— except
for maybe one disoriented moose.