D. Rhythm in English
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Stress or emphasis - means the relative force or emphasis given to a syllable or word and often affects the meaning of a sentence. In spoken English, if you stress the wrong syllable, you can totally lose the meaning of a word:
“ MA-sheen” is hardly recognizable as “ ma-SHEEN”
The study stress is focused on three levels:
word
phrase
sentence
Word Stress
doctor inject education
dentist inform cafeteria
hospital consult operation
nursery digestion guarantee
clinic consult consultations
Phrase/ Clause Stress
The green bag about the exam inside the room
To go to school under the table about the test
Along the river in a blue dress tissue paper
To see a movie while in the bus because of you
Up to 12 midnight on your birthday since he arrived
Sentence Stress- This is giving importance to a word or words in a sentence. The following content words are usually stressed.
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Nouns – name words used to name a persons, places or things.
Examples: president palace country
Adviser students school
Mr. Santiago Metro Manila book
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Verbs- action words
Examples: compute deliberate acknowledge
determine decide inspect
coordinate consider calculate
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Adjectives—picture words
Examples: charming diligent interesting
impressive handsome brilliant
adorable exciting gigantic
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Adverbs—describe or modify verbs, adjectives or another adverb.
Examples: happily terribly interesting
sadly nicely slowly
beautifully impressively bravely
The principal is here. What are you doing?
You walk too fast. I want to rest.
Who prepared the meal. She’s do wonderful!
What a nice day! Is it raining?
I haven’t seen her. Are you calling me?
2. Intonation—is the rise and fall in pitch of the voice. It is the combination of the musical tones on which we pronounce the syllables that make up our speech. It is also called speech melody.
English has four levels of pitch combined to make English intonation.
These are :
1. Extra high pitch use for expressing very strong emotions for excited expressions such as : wow, ouch and oh
2. High pitch- used to coincide with sentence stress, that is , high pitch goes together with the primary stress. This level is used when giving emphasis or importance to a thought or idea.
3. Normal pitch- this is the average pitch of the speaker.
4. Low pitch- this is the lowest pitch and is normally used in ending of thoughts.
Activity :
Underline the importance of intonation when students, as they often do, talk like robots. Basically, get them to say the words in quotation marks in the contexts that follow.
“Goodbye”
-to a member of your family as they are going through the boarding gate at the airport
-to someone who has been annoying you
-to a child starting his very first day at school
“How are you?”
-to someone you haven't seen for 20 years
-to someone who has recently lost a member of the family
-to someone who didn't sleep in their own bed last night
'Hello'
-to a friend
-to a friend you haven't seen for 3 years
-to a neighbor that you don't like
-to a 6 month old baby
-to someone you have just found doing something they shouldn't
-to someone on the phone when you're not sure if they are still on the other end