English Pronunciation for Communication -- An Introduction English Pronunciation for Communication is a compulsory course offered to the first year English majors with an aim to help the students to improve their English pronunciation and intonation for more effective communication. The students will undergo intensive training in the pronunciation of individual phonemes in English, in the rhythmic patterns of the English language and in the patterns and functions of English intonation, so that the students will be able to communicate more effectively with good pronunciation and intonation. To have good pronunciation means 1) to pronounce correctly all the individual speech sounds in English; 2) to pronounce correctly the speech sounds in their combinations in isolated words as well as in sentences; 3) to speak fluently with correct rhythm, including the correct placement of stresses and pauses and the transition of sounds according to the context; and 4) to speak with appropriate intonation according to the context. Before we attain good pronunciation, it is essential that we should perceive the differences between the sounds in the new language. This is what the present course sets out to do: drills of listening and discrimination come before all attempts at performance. As most of the students have already gone over some practice in English pronunciation, we will concentrate on some of the difficult sounds. And as we all know that English rhythm is new and difficult to most of us, we will pay special attention to the training of the features that are required for the appropriate rhythm. The use of correct intonation also forms an important part of the course. Such a perceptual approach requires from the learner only the minimum of theoretical knowledge. For this reason, the theoretical commentary in this course is restricted to essentials. For more detailed theoretical information, such as might be needed by an instructor or a more advanced student, the user is referred to the following books: An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English (A.C. Gimson, 1970), Better English Pronunciation (J.D. O'Connor, 1967) and English Phonetics and Phonology (P. Roach, 1983). 1. English phonemes: discrimination and pronunciation Correct discrimination of English phonemes is the first step towards the correct pronunciation. The students need to learn the correct discrimination and pronunciation of the English consonants and vowels. English Consonants There are 24 consonants in English. These consonants may be classified according to the following: 1) place of articulation, 2) manner of articulation, and 3) voicing, i.e. voiced or voiceless. According to the place of articulation we may distinguish the following types of consonants: 1) bilabial (two lips) 2) labio-dental (top teeth/bottom lip) 3) dental (tongue tip/top teeth) 4) alveolar (tongue tip/tooth ridge) 5) post-alveolar (tongue tip/hard palate) 6) palate-alveolar (tongue mid/hard palate) 7) palatal (tongue mid/hard palate) 8) velar (tongue back/soft palate) 9) glottal (not localized) According to the manner of articulation we can distinguish: 1) stops (or plosives) 2) fricatives 3) affricates 4) nasals 5) lateral(s) 6) semi-vowels It will be useful if we place the English consonants on a chart. On the following chart, the different places of articulation are arranged from left to right and the manner of articulation is arranged from top to bottom. Where there is a pair of consonants with the same place and manner of articulation but differing in whether they are voiced or voiceless, the voiceless one is placed to the top of the voiced. Place of articulation Manner of articulation Bilabial Labio- Dental Dental Alveolar Palato- alveolar Palatal Velar Glotal  Plosive p b   t d   k (   Fricative  f v ( ( s z ( (   h  Affricate     t( d(     Nasal  m    n    (   Lateral     l      Approximant  w     r  j     English Vowels There are 20 vowels in English among which 12 are pure vowels and 8 are diphthongs. A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another within one syllable. The English pure vowels can be classified according to: 1) the height of the raised part of the tongue, 2) the part of the tongue raised, 3) the position of the lips. The chart in the textbook is often used to describe the English pure vowels. In the chart, the front vowels are to the left, and the back vowels to the right, the close vowels are upmost and the open ones at the bottom. Those in the circle are rounded vowels while those in the square are unrounded ones (See textbook). The chart below is also a description of the English pure vowels.  According to the classification, /i:/ is a close, front and unrounded vowel, /u:/ a close, back and rounded vowel, /(/ an open, front unrounded vowel and / / an open, back and rounded vowel. The eight English diphthongs can be divided into three groups: three with a glide towards /(/ (/e(/, /a(/, /((/), two with a glide towards /(/ (/((/, /a(/), and three with a glide towards /(/ (/((/, /e(/, /((/). The first element of an English Diphthong is strong, clear and distinct. The second element is rather weak and unclear. 2. Stress of English words and sentences: basic rules and functions The students need to learn the concept about words stress and sentence stress. In some languages, every syllable is given about the same length while in others, syllables vary in length. In English, strong beats are called stress. In words of more than one syllable, one of them will receive more stress than the others. Stressed syllables are those that are marked in the dictionary as stressed. Stressed syllables are usually longer, louder, and higher in pitch. In English, stressed syllables are usually long syllables with clear vowel sounds. The word "banana", for example, has 3 syllables. Syllable 1 is not stressed and so is short. Syllable 2 is stressed and so is long with a clear vowel sound. Syllable 3 is not stressed and so is also short. In conclusion, stressed syllables are strong syllables and unstressed syllables are weak syllables. Stressed syllables are usually long, have a pitch change and have full vowel sounds while unstressed syllables are short and often have a reduced vowel sound. In an English utterance, stressed words give information to the listener and unstressed words join the information words together. Correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed words is thus extremely important for effective communication in English. Information words in a sentence are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They give information about who, what, when, where, why, and how. They express the main idea or content of the phrase or sentence. They carry the message and therefore usually stressed. Unstressed words are usually function words like articles, pronouns, possessives, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and conjunctions. These words connect the information words to form grammatical sentences. If you stress all the words in an utterance, you may sound unpleasant or even cause misunderstanding because you are giving too much information, and English speakers usually stress all words only when they are impatient or angry. English rhythmic patterns: basic features and functions The students need to learn about the concept of the rhythmic patterns in English. Correct pronunciation of the individual English sounds is important in communication, but the way the sounds are organized is often more crucial for understanding. The rhythm of English, for example, is one of the two major organizing structures that native speakers rely on to process speech. Rhythm can be found everywhere in life: the sound of a clock, the beating of the heart, the strokes of a swimmer, and of course in poetry and music. But rhythm in language is less familiar because it is less obvious. The rhythm of a language is characterized by the timing pattern of successive syllables. In some languages, every syllable is given about the same length while in others, syllables vary in length. In English, strong beats are called stress -- the heart of the rhythmic pattern. Every language in the world has its own rhythmic patterns. English is very different from Chinese in its rhythmic patterns. From what we learned in the previous units, we know that English depends on the correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed or weakened syllables recurring in the same phrase or sentence in the expression of ideas. In another word, variation of words or syllables that have strong stress with those that have weaker or reduced stress is typical and contributes to the rhythm of English. When English speakers are speaking, therefore, they usually: make some parts of words stronger and clearer than other parts join parts of the words together arrange words into groups and join them together make some words stronger and clearer than other words. If a Chinese EFL learner fails to follow the rules and say all English words in a sentence in a strong way, English speakers may not understand what he says, or think that he is impolite or angry. Misunderstanding may arise or communication may break down because of that. So, for more effective communication, we need to master the rhythm of English. In conclusion, rhythm in English speech is based on stress. A rhythm unit is formed by a stressed syllable, together with unstressed syllables which may come before that stress and/or after it. The importance of learning the stress and rhythmic patterns of English is emphasized from the very beginning of the course (the focus of Unit One of the textbook) with the purpose that students should be able to learn how to pronounce the words and sentences with appropriate stress and rhythm in order to improve the fluency in English. Exercises in Units 1, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 provide extensive training in English stress and rhythm. English intonation: structures, functions and use We call the melody of language intonation. Intonation refers to the total pattern of pitch changes, i.e., the rising and falling of the voice when a person is speaking, within an utterance. Intonation is another important element of spoken English. It is the English intonation which makes English sound really English. Intonation makes speech meaningful. English intonation adds the meaning of an utterance in two ways: It shows the relationship of words within and between sentences; It tells something about the feeling of the speaker. In other words, different pitches may indicate different meanings for the same utterance. Different pitches help us express our feelings: happiness, sadness, surprise, annoyance, anger, and so on. In listening to the meaning of an utterance, therefore, we listen to how speakers talk as well as to what they say. The HOW and WHAT together give us the meaning of an English utterance. We now see the importance to use the appropriate intonation patterns when we speak. Otherwise, we may be sending messages using intonations that contradict what we want words to say. Intonation patterns that disagree with the content of the utterance may indicate doubt, sarcasm, or confusion. English has two basic intonation patterns: rising and falling. When they go together, they can make a falling-rising tone. Intonation units are also called intonation-groups, tone groups or tone-units. An intonation unit usually corresponds to a sense group (or word group). An intonation unit may contain several syllables, some of them stressed and some unstressed. The last stressed syllable is usually a marker of the highest importance and has the focus stress. On this syllable, there takes place a change of pitch, either an upward or downward movement, or a combination of the two. A nucleus refers to the syllable in an intonation unit which carries maximal prominence. For example, this is the normal way of saying the following sentence: I am WRIting a LETter to him NOW. There are ten syllables in this sentence among which three are stressed syllables. The last stressed syllable is NOW. So we say that NOW has the focus stress, and is the tonic syllable and therefore is the nucleus of the intonation unit. The nucleus is the essential part of the intonation unit. It is still present even if the unit consists of a single syllable, as is the case with many sentence words like yes, no, why, etc. Tail, Head & Pre-head of an intonation unit: Any syllable or syllables that may follow the nucleus in an intonation unit are called the "tail". In the sentence "I am WRIting a LETter to him", the nucleus of this intonation unit is on the tonic syllable "LET". There are three unstressed syllables after the nucleus. These syllables are called the "tail" of this intonation unit. The part of an intonation unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to the nucleus ia called the "head" of the intonation unit. In the sentence "I am WRIting a LETter to him", the "head" of this intonation unit is made up of three syllables: "writing a". Any unstressed syllable or syllables that may precede the "head", or the "nucleus" if there is no head, are called the "pre-head". In the sentence "I am WRIting a LETter to him", "I am" comprises the "pre-head" of this intonation unit. So if you analyze the following sentence, we will come up with the structure of an intonation unit like this: I am WRIting a LET ter to him. P H N T P = Pre-head H = Head N = Nucleus T = Tail Following are the important functions of English intonation: A. The attitudinal function Intonation is used to convey our feelings and attitudes. For instance, the same sentence can be said in different ways, which might be labeled "happy", "grateful", "angry", "bored", and so on. Usually, intonation units with high heads sound more lively, interesting than those with low heads. A few generalisations are often made here: the falling intonation is said to be more often associated with completeness and definiteness; the rising intonation is more often associated with incompleteness and uncertainty or questioning; The falling-rising is said to have feelings of hesitation, contrast, reservation or doubt. B. The accentual function The location of the tonic syllable is of considerable linguistic importance. The most common position for this is on the last information word of the intonation unit. For contrastive purpose, however, any word may bear the tonic syllable. C. The grammatical function Some sentence may be ambiguous when written, but this can be removed by the use of intonation. An often cited example is the sentence "Those who sold quickly made a profit". This sentence can be said in at least two different ways: A profit was made by those who sold quickly. A profit was quickly made by those who sold. Another example is the use of rising tone in statements. The sentence "They're going to have a picnic" is usually said as a statement like this: The sentence serves as a question here. The intonation used in question-tags can have a rising tone or a falling tone: When it has a falling tone, as in (a), the speaker is comparatively certain that the information is correct, and simply asking for conformation, while the rising tone in (b) is said to indicate a lesser degree of certainty, so the speaker is asking for information. D. The discourse function of intonation In speech, people often use intonation to focus the listener's attention on aspects of the message that are most important. So the placement of nucleus or tonic stress depends on the "information content": the more predictable a word's occurrence is in a given context, the lower its information content is. For example, people would say: The (telephone's ringing. The (kettle's boiling. In speech, people often use the falling tone to indicate new information and rising tone (including falling-rising) to indicate "shared" of "given" information. People also use intonation to indicate to others that they have finished speaking and that another person is expected to speak. Units 13-15 deals with the intonation patterns, structures, functions and uses of English intonation. 5. List of contents for the textbook Unit 1 Basic Concepts: Syllables, Stress & Rhythm Unit 2 Consonants: Stops Unit 3 Consonants: Fricatives and Affricates Unit 4 Consonants: Nasals, Approximants & Literal(s) Unit 5 Vowels: Front Vowels & Central Vowels Unit 6 Vowels: Back Vowels Unit 7 Vowels: Diphthongs Unit 8 Stressed Syllables & Unstressed Syllables Unit 9 Stressed Words & Unstressed Words in a Sentence Unit 10 Strong Forms and Weak Forms Unit 11 Linking Unit 12 Rhythm of English Speech Unit 13 Types of Intonation in English Unit 14 Intonation Units of English Unit 15 Functions & Uses of English Intonation Unit 1 is a general introduction to the basic concept about English stress and rhythm which is believed to be able to help the students to form a good habit from the very beginning in their way of pronunciation. Units 2 to 7 focus on the pronunciation of the individual phonemes in English, including both vowels and consonants. Students are required to do intensive practice in stress and rhythm when they are learning Units 8 to 12. Units 13 to 15 focus on the structure and use of English intonation.