Wednesday, October 15, 2008

English Rhythm

What a wonderful phonetics class! I will share some valuable tips Shirley Thompson gave us to make pronunciation a rich experience.
  • English rhythm comes from stressing some syllables and not others.
  • English Melody comes from pitch changes.
  • Stress new information, the Last context word in a thought group, to show contrast, to focus the listener .

And what is a thought group?

According to Shirley Thompson a thought group:

  • has meaning and is a grammatical unit, usually has one primary stress, has its own intonation pattern, is follewed by a brief pause, has linked sounds, a pause has some power to draw your attention to what the speaker is trying to say.

3 comments:

Nina Liakos said...

Shirley has been inspiring me for years with her innovative and artistic approaches to teaching. A left-brained sequential thinker such as myself can only wonder at her ability to link difference things together to form a cohesive whole.

mreal said...

Yes I agree with Nina's words. In fact as Shirley says "English Music is more important than teaching sounds"... "We speak in Thought groups and not word by word" and that I consider is an important integrated Approach.

Shirley T said...

Marcela -
I'm happy you were a part of this week. Thank you for sharing so much. The demonstration of educational kinesiology was great.

Enjoy you time in Chicago. It's a wonderful city.