rising intonation, as if the sentence were just a list of
individual words. Needless to say, this is not a model that
will help students use natural-sounding intonation.
- Feelings: Sometimes students feel self-conscious about
using strange, new intonation patterns. Adolescent or
young adult learners in particular might feel awkward or
embarrassed if they sound di"erent from others around
them. Even adult learners can feel hesitant about
breaking out of familiar intonation habits to try new and
unfamiliar “melodies.” For some learners, trying to sound
truly di"erent can be as disturbing as being asked to walk
around naked. (Well, maybe not quite!)
- There are too many things to think about. Learners
have to think about a lot of things when they speak in
addition to pronunciation—word choice, grammatical
forms, politeness, meaning—and these things have not
yet become automatic. It’s hard to have any attention left
over for intonation. It’s very di#cult to concentrate on
too many things at once.
- Motivation: Some learners just don’t care about
intonation. Maybe they’re not convinced that intonation
really is important, and so they don’t want to bother with
it. Or they might think that if they’re not going to be
tested on it, they’ll save their e"ort for other things that
will be tested. (Is it possible that some teachers also feel
this way?)
What can the teacher do about all these problems?
- Make sure to include intonation in your teaching and
help students to notice it and understand its function and
importance in language.
- Give students lots of exposure to authentic English
through recordings and videos, and give them chances to
analyze and imitate the intonation of the speakers.
- Encourage students to pay attention to the intonation
they hear in these recordings and to form their own
generalizations about what it means and how it’s used.
This ability to listen and analyze language is a skill that
they can use even after they are no longer your students.
- Try to create a warm, unthreatening classroom
environment where students can feel comfortable trying
out new intonation patterns and new language in general.
- Memorizing rules is usually not the most e"ective way to
teach intonation or other aspects of pronunciation. Help
students think about rules as guidelines to help them
make appropriate choices, not commands that they have
to follow. We often learn to use a new bit of language
even without being able to quote the rule that !ts it.
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