Intonati

A Phonological Feature

By: Jackielou U. Zapanta

 What is
 Intonation?
Intonation is a complex system of meaning
communicated through the rise and fall of a
speaker's voice.
 English speakers use it to communicate many
different types of meaning: grammatical meaning
e.g. different types of questions and statements.
 It is how you pronounce the words
 The sound of each word you utter

“Controlling your intonation is

important in communicating spoken
English.”
 What are the rules of intonation?

 There are two basic intonation patterns: Rising and

Falling. With rising intonation, you have to raise
slightly the pitch at the end of the sentence,
whereas with falling intonation you go down a bit. We
use falling intonation with Statements.
There are seven possible intonation patterns
in English
 Rising
 Falling
 Rising-Falling
 Falling-Rising
 Flat
 High
 Low
The most important are the first four:
Rising,
Falling,
Rising-Falling,
Falling-Rising

Flat tones, including high and low tones, aren’t

common and don’t have many uses, however, rising
and falling tones can each have many different
meanings.
For Example:

Rising – Where?
Falling – Where?
Rising-Falling - Where?
Falling-Rising - Where?
 Why is intonation difficult to
teach?

Teaching intonation can be difficult at first, since the

students are only just learning to speak a new language
and this all takes time. As a teacher, it can be important
to correlate a sentence with the local language of the
speaker to help them understand the words and the intent
of the sentence easily.
Thank
You!