ELC 121

INTEGRATED LANGUAGE SKILL I

Week 3: Listening
Listening to stress and intonation

Lecturer: Miss Nurul Amalina Binti Anawar

Definition and Examples

1. Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in

communication process.
2. Listening is key to all effective communication. Without it, messages are
easily misunderstood – communication breaks down while the sender of the
messages can easily become frustrated and irritated.
3. Effective listening involved observing non verbal cues AND noticing
inconsistencies between verbal and non-verbal messages
4. For example, if someone says ‘okay’ to your statement but rolls his/her eyes
at the same time, you should condsider that the verbal and non verbal
messages are in conflict, that they maybe don’t mean what they say (the
‘okay’ word) – and that they are not convinced with your message.
This, of course is easy if you are involved in a face to face interaction. But what happens
if you have to converse via phone or listening to a voice record?

The best listeners listen between the lines

– Nina Malkin

When you lost the sense of sight of the speaker and is unable to pick up the body
language, you have to rely solely on the speaker’s utterances.

This is as in between those spoken messages, there sometimes lies hidden truth.
Stress and intonation

• Good listener listens to stress and intonation in speech to identify words and
sentence pattern.
• The ability to listen to these two will help one to identify the keyword and
grasp the hidden meaning of the uttered speech easier.
WORD STRESS
• When native speakers speaks the language, they accentuate ONE of the syllable
(just one, never more than that) in every word.
• This one special syllable is uttered using extra strength than the rest. The
ability to put the stress on the right syllable when speaking allows one to
sounds natural.
mother building example cat exception
• How to know which syllable should be stressed on? Try uttering it out loud by
stressing different syllable each time.
• The one which sounds very natural to your ears is the correct one as that is how
it is always uttered by the natives, perceived incidentally by your hearing and
kept in memory.
• While most words have the already-set syllable to be stressed on
(e.g. it is always mother and never mother) , some special case words like
present and dessert can be stressed either way (1st / 2nd syllable).

• However, the difference of stress point in the word could change the
meaning.
present- noun (gift) / adjective (opposite of absent)
present- verb (to offer/ to explain)

• The ability to listen and differentiate the stress point will help listener to
understand the meaning of the word being uttered, put it in context and
understand the whole message.
SENTENCE STRESS
• Sentence stress is the music of spoken English
• While word stress is the accentuation of one syllable in word, sentence stress is the
accentuation of certain words within a sentence.
• Ability to identify stress in sentence is important to help listener in grasping the important
word within the messages.

• Words that usually are stressed in sentences are content word (important words that
carry meaning) and not structure word (simple words that make the sentence
grammatically correct)

Eg. Please water the plant when I’m away tomorrow

Water, plant, away and tomorrow are the content words while others are structure words

• Just by focusing on these four words alone is enough to let the listeners to get the gist of the
sentence.
INTONATION
• Refers to how high or low the pitch of one’s voice (think of singers reaching low or high note
when singing)
• Not to be confused with volume (think of turning up the volume of TV)
• Awareness of the change in speaker’s intonation allows listener to understand the purpose of
a sentence being uttered and the attitude of the speaker.
• While some of these info could be shown via punctuation in writing, most of them could not
and need to be describe by words to tell reader. This is why spoken language is richer in
information compared to writing language.

Understanding purpose (to state, to declare, to ask, to clarify)

It’s raining It’s raining (?)

(flat, a statement) (rising at the end, a question)
Understanding attitude – intonation could also inform listener on the speakers’
attitude as it includes tone. (disappointment, excitement, bored etc)

• It’s raining It’s raining (!)

(falling tone, shows boredness / disappointment ) (rising and falling, could show excitement
/confusion, disbelief (positive/ negative)

• While you might think that it is hard to actually master the art of listening between the lines,
please don’t be discourage as it is not impossible either.
• Think of how you can understand these hidden messages while you are conversing in your
mother tongue. It is very similar to that. You can listen to these hidden clues because you are
familiar to them!
• Now, all you need to do is be familiar with the sound system of English language. Practise
listening to authentic conversation in English language and you will eventually be able to pick up
the skill bit by bit in long run. Good luck! 