don’t have any stops, fricatives, or a"ricates, especially
voiceless ones. Those sounds result in blank spots in the
intonation line. Choose sentences that have lots of sonorants:
Vowels, nasals, liquids, and glides. Look at the di"erence in
the intonation lines of these two sentences, analyzed using
Praat:
Pat bought lots of potatoes. (Lots of stops)
We’re rolling a ball away. (Only one stop—a voiced one)
Questions and answers: Many simple speaking activities
also give provide practice with intonation. For example, give
partners a picture and have them ask and answer questions
about it, either about what they can see in the picture or
about what they imagine the story behind it to be. Remind
them that yes/no questions typically have rising intonation,
while WH- questions typically have falling intonation.Dialogs, skits, and shadowing: These provide good
practice with intonation because they set up a particular
context for language and encourage students to use the
intonation that !ts that context. More discussion of these
techniques is coming later in this chapter.Predicting intonation: After students have had many
chances to hear and practice typical intonation patterns, they
can be asked to predict the intonation for a conversation they
have seen in writing but haven’t heard yet. Predicting
intonation can be di#cult unless you stick to simple, obvious
examples. Don’t make the task too challenging at !rst. If it’s
not obvious what the intonation for a particular dialog
should be, make sure students have a chance to hear the
dialog !rst before they’re expected to know what the
intonation should be.172