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This unit covers a range of topics related to pronunciation and phonology in the English language - intonation, word/sentence stress and phonetic alphabet among other things. This part of the language is often omitted by english teachers, mostly for the lack of training and/or confidence to tackle this area. Personally, I remember English classes in elementary school devoted to correct pronunciation, intonation and reading of phonetic scripts, but it certainly depends on the teacher´s experience and ideas about the subject. Intonation is about how we say things rather than what we say. Without intonation, it is impossible to understand the thoughts that go with words. It is a variation of speaking pitch, by definition. However students are often so busy finding words that the intonation suffers. Changing the intonation can sometimes completely change the meaning of the sentence. Incorrect intonation can therefore lead to misunderstandings, speakers losing interest or even taking offence. There is a number of techniques which might be used to raise awareness about and improve intonation, eg. humming out or singing sentences, using gestures and sounds to emphasise stress and intonation. Interesting and engaging activities may include - to ask the learners to have a short conversation as robots, without intonation, followed by a a normal conversation - and pay attention to the difference made by intonation; Mr. Grumpy and Ms. Happy - where students practice conveying attitude (each student is assigned with particular attitude, students are greeting each other, identifying each others´ role). Stress is accent on a particular syllable within a word - word stress or certain word within a sentence - sentence stress. To understand word stress, it helps to understand word syllables. There are some general rules, the most important being: 1. one word, one stress and 2. stress always on a vowel. There are, of course, more, rather complicated rules as well as many exceptions. Even native English speakers don't always "agree" on where to put the stress (typical example might be the word ´television´. In normal speech, there are more syllables without stress than with stress. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm. Generally, sentences are build from content and structure words. Content words are those carrying the meaning or sense, while structure words ´only´ makes the sentence grammatically correct. Without structure words, we´d still be able to understand the message. Content words are stressed (verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives), structure words are unstressed (pronouns, prepositions, articles etc.) for what is called "neutral" or normal stress. Again, there is a number of exceptions. I believe the best way to learn is from experience. Learners need to listen carefully and practice in order to understand or ´feel´ the music of the language and add the stress naturally.
