Clase 07

UP OR DOWN?

WHERE DOES THE VOICE GO?

We finally got to the third system of intonation: the system of tone. Tone is related to
the use of rising and falling pitch movements to convey linguistic (message) and
pragmatic (situation) meanings.

How do we decide on the most suitable tone for our texts? Let's watch this
introductory video before we start studying tones in more detail.

Two major ideas from the video which we should always remember:

● ALL tone choices make meaning (even unintentional use of tones).

● Tones tend to be associated with certain grammatical structures (default
tone).

Let's now watch the following video to see how a slight change in tone may bring
about an unexpected outcome:
As we could see in the video, a silly misunderstanding in tone changes the situation
completely.

How does this help us as teachers?

We, teachers, should be ready to read texts which don't have an audio file as an extra
resource. We should be able to make accurate decisions as to what we are to read,
so that we can expose our students to fairly suitable tone decisions and precise
linguistic and pragmatic meanings.

● We should be able to read a text like the one below:

This has been taken from http://www.incidentalcomics.com/ (very useful for
teaching)

● We should also be able to read a text like this one:

This was taken from Speak Out Upper Intermediate, Unit 7.1.

● And we should be able to read something like this:

This was also taken from Speak Out Upper Intermediate.

How do we develop the ability to identify and use tones??

DO LOTS OF LISTENING
ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH

● Audio files in English textbooks

● Audiobooks online
● Podcasts online
● Films in English (with subtitles in English as well)
● Videos in YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,
etc, etc, etc
 IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOU!

In order to be familiar with the choices, we'll read the first section in the Theory
Handout for TONE.

To download the handout on TONE, please click here.

Clase 07

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

The first step we can take to improve our oral production is to improve our
identification of phonological phenomena.

We'll start listening and identifying tones, before going deeper into other decisions
related to the production of tones.
● First, we'll listen to different grammatical structures and try to identify if they
are said with the default tone or not (falling or rising in each case).

● Now, we'll listen to the following questions and identify the tones used. They
may or may not follow the tendency.

● Finally, we'll listen and check how different questions are produced with
either FALLING or RISING tone to convey different meanings: "finding out" or
"making sure".
After you've finished with the activities, it would be great if you could listen to the
files and repeat as many times as possible. This will improve your production
eventually.
Clase 07

WHERE DOES IT FALL? WHERE DOES IT RISE?

FINDING THEM!

We'll watch a video where different tips are given regarding nutritious food.

● Let's choose a section we find easier to analyse.

● Let's try to identify at least a couple of falling tones and a couple of rising
tones.
● Extract 5 examples that you can easily analyse taking into account the three
systems of intonation: tonality, tonicity and tone.

Liked it? Found it useful? Great!

Finally, you will go to the text in Unit 4.1: OUT OF TIME, Speak Out Upper
Intermediate:

1. Divide it into tone groups.

2. Suggest tonic syllables.
3. Suggest where rising and falling pitch movements would go and be ready to
justify your decisions.

I will be uploading a dictation soon, for you to start practising dictation again.

If there are any questions on the material, please go to the UP or DOWN forum.