1. Introduction
Learning the intonation patterns of a language is essential both for
listening and speaking. Some believe that teaching and learning English
intonation in L2 and ESL environments is a positive step towards the
achievement of intelligible pronunciation. In this demonstration project, based
on the article “Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension” (J.B Gilbert, 1984)
and a short review of other authors’ supportive concepts, a lesson plan was
designed to implement these concepts in first grade bilingual classrooms. As the
main objective, students will be able to identify the emphasis and pauses in
sentences in order to improve their listening and speaking skills.
Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension 1

2. Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension
Pronunciation and listening are closely related in a speech loop between
speaker and listener. The most powerful signals in spoken English are expressed
by intonational devices: pitch patterns and timing or otherwise called the
musical patterns of English. In English,the most important functions in intonation
are the following: to show contrast between new information and old
information, and to show boundaries between thought groups. English learners
can benefitby practicing in class, the main functions of English intonation and
the basic physical devices: pitch change, lengthening and vowel clarity. In the
same way, practice with the signals for thought grouping boundaries can
improve both comprehension and comprehensibility (Gilbert,1984).
Relating Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension
The importance of listening and pronunciation skills is emphasizedin the
curriculum Listening and pronunciation are key elements in the improvement of
language ability. Nevertheless, in speech, people often use intonation to focus
the listener’s attention on aspects of the message that are most important.
Intonation and stress work together to express meaning andthis makes it easier
for a listener to understand what a speaker is trying to convey.
Indeed when we talk about intonation, we can remember the phrase: "It's
not what you said, it's how you said it!”. This clearly illustrates in a very simple way
Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension 2

3. the importance of intonation. Of course, this is in reference to the intonation
pattern of words or phrases being uttered rather than their lexical content.
Equally significant is the fact that native speakers are often unaware of
intonation and its role in their language. This applies to English as well as to other
spoken languages. Simply put, it means that while native English speakers can
easily recognize the grammatical and pronunciation difficulties faced by non-
native speakers, and thus make allowances for their errors, however, they are
unable to do so for intonation. More often than not, intonation errors made by
non-native speakers may not be recognized and, hence, may lead to
misunderstanding.
This buttresses the argument that intonation is a strong aspect of
language which has always had its effect on communication. Pike in (Hewings,
1995) clarifies thispoint with the argument that “We often react more violently to
. . . intonational meanings than to . . .lexical ones; if a man's tone of voice belies
his words, we immediately assume that the intonation more faithfully reflects his
true linguistic intentions” (p. 251).
Despite such doubting comments, many professionals working in L2
(Second Language) or ESL (English as a Second Language) environments tend
to accept popular research and anecdotal data showing persistent problems
and difficulties arising from intonational misunderstandings between native and
non-native speakers.
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4. Misunderstanding is not only the main problem of intonation difficulties but
also conversation with native speakers can become an embarrassing situation
for many students. This embarrassment is caused by the communication
difficulties and the inability to convey their ideas. This inability can lead to
discouragement to many students since they understand written words but not
spoken ones. As it is well known, communication depends on both sides the
speaker and the listener. This is a constant process of reassessment of matching
systems of speech signals and that is the reason why listening skills and
pronunciation are directly interrelated.
Intonation: The Musical Signals of English
Intonation is the most important part of English pronunciation referred here
as the music of language. This consists of pitch patterns (melody) and timing
patterns (timing). Comprehension is greatly affected by faulty musical patterns
because these patterns are directly tied to critically important signals for
meaning. If student does not use these signals, pronunciation is impaired. In the
same, if the student does not recognize these signals in the speech of a native
speaker, then listening comprehension is impaired.Brown (1977) explained the
importance of intonation in this way: “the ability to identify stressed syllables and
make intelligent guesses about the content of the message from the information
is absolutely essential”.
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5. But, what is intonation? It is generally believed that it is spoken sounds
strung together, one after the other. More precisely, speech is a continuum; a
continuous flux of initiatory, phonatory, and articulatory states and movements,
constantly changing, often overlapping and interpenetrating and influencing
each other.According to Catford (1992), when people look at isolated sounds,
they are artificially cutting up that flowing chain of events into a series of
segments or segmental sounds. In reality, these segments are the speech-sounds
that are isolated out of the continuum.
For one, native English speakers produce melodies of varying kinds, with
the voice rising and falling. Such melodies are technically called
intonation.Nevertheless, opinions do differ when defining intonation. Ladd
(1980), an eminent Canadian scholar ofphonology, defines it as “The use of
suprasegmental phonetic features (pitch) to convey postlexical or sentence-
level pragmatic meanings in a linguistically structured way” (p. 6). On the other
hand, inRanalli (2002), Cruttenden, equates it specifically with pitch movements,
while Coulthard identifies it with prosody which would include not only pitch
movements but also loudness, length, speed, andeven voice quality. Pitch,
however, seems to be the common thread running through most definitions or
descriptions of intonation. Cruttenden describes pitch as the “perceptual
correlate of fundamentalfrequency” (p. 1), which, in essence, is the continuous
variation in the sounds we perceive as a result of the vibration of the vocal
cords. As such, intonation can be described as the movements or variations in
Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension 5

6. pitch to which we attach familiar labels describing levels (e.g. high / low) and
tones (e.g. falling / rising), etc. (Ranalli, 2002).
Marking New Information- Old Information
English uses intonation to mark the distinction between old and new
information. Old information concerns ideas already discussed or mutually
understood and new information concerns the new thought to which the
speaker wishes to call attention. The shift of emphasis is systematic in
conversation because it helps the listener and speaker follow each other’s
thoughts and it is called sentence stress. Sentence stress has four different
signals: pitch change, length of vowel, clarity of vowel, and loudness.
The clarity of the vowel is a particularly difficult concept for students since
in their native languages all vowels are spoken in a full, clear way. The English
system of stress requires reductions of some vowels to show which syllables are
stressed.
Contrast shows which words are emphasized or important and
whichwords are not emphasized or less important. English listeners depend on
contrast of emphasis to know which words are genuinely important and if
language learners emphasize many words just to be understood, they may
confuse the English listener searching for emphasis. The emphasized words are
the content words such as nouns, main verbs, adverbs and adjectives; and the
not emphasized words are the structure words such as pronouns, prepositions,
articles, “to be” verbs, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs.
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7. Thought Groups and Pause
What are thought groups? Thought groups refer to natural divisions we
make when reading a text, speaking to other people, or giving a speech in front
of a class. It is important to stress that these divisions or “speech chunks”
arenatural because, whether you are a foreign speaker of English and a native
speaker of a different language, we divide or chunk our speech or a passage
we are reading keeping the essence of logical linked ideas.
What are thought groups used for? A thought group is a speech
unit speakers use to divide the message they want to convey. That is, when
reading a text, we pay attention to punctuation marks, which are natural
thought group divisions writers use to separate ideas, to better comprehend
what is being said in sentences. When speaking, we do not use punctuation
marks, yet we signal the beginning or end of a new idea, -thought group-, with
a short pause.
How many thought groups can we find in a sentence in a text? That
depends on what kind of sentence you are analyzing. A sentence such as
“She’s a nice person /,” just contains a thought group, since it is rather short.
However, a statement like “Since I moved to this neighborhood, / I have gone
jogging in the park / because I want to be fit / and need to get more vitality /”
has four different chunks because this complex compound sentence includes
several ideas that a speaker or writer intends to communicate.
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8. To sum up, thought groups serve two different purposes. On the speaker’s
hand, s/he is giving the chance to breathe. No breathing implies the absence of
air in one’s lungs; then speech becomes simply impossible. On the listener’s
hand, it is essential time that is necessary to process the information provided by
the speaker. That is why we can state that thought groups contribute with
“good” communication.
Musical signals are used to mark the end of thought groups; the speaker
marks the end of a group with a pause. In rapid speech, there may not be time
for a pause, so a second signal is relied on: a pitch fall on the final syllable.
Listeners can also hear punctuation which marks thought groups. Indeed,
intonation can assist the development of receptive skills and can help the
student to process “what goes with what” and how information structure is
developed.
Teaching and Learning Processes
English intonation may be best taught if it is instructed and practiced with
the appropriate useof phrase boundaries. Since the use of phrase
boundaries/grouping is closely related to speakers’ pausingmanner, teachers
are encouraged to help students learn when and how they should pause their
speech,using correct intonation patterns.
Additionally, learners who tend to have difficulty in stressing content words
adequately are likely tomake problematic intonational errors in their speech.
Such students should learn how to distinguishcontent words from function words
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9. before learning how to sentence-stress properly. And since acquiring intonation
skills is closely linked to a learner’s semantic understanding, L2and ESL teachers
are urged to teach English intonation with much emphasis on
communicativepurposes and functions and in a socially-interactive setting.
Indeed, teachers are encouraged to teach English intonation not only in
pronunciation/conversationclasses, but also in other classes such as reading,
listening, etc.
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10. Mediation activity
In light of the importance that emphasis, grouping and pause patterns
have in the learning process of English, it is advisable to teach these concepts at
a young age. For this reason, the activity designed for this project is aimed at first
graders. The lesson plan is based on the popular book Green Eggs and Ham by
Dr. Seuss, an author that revolutionized the field of beginning readers in the
1930’s and that is still a favorite today. Geisel’s wit and imagination captivate
the young reader attention, and the lively visual and verbal playin his stories
allow for them to be usedproductively in language learning activities.
The mediation activity starts with a motivation focused on relating the
book with the movie “Horton Hears a Who!”. Then, it is followed by a Pre-Task
exercise with some of the vocabulary in the story. The main exercise consists of
three parts: watching a video with the narration, listening to and repeating
some sentences in the story with emphasis patterns and again, listening to and
repeating other sentences with pauses. As a Post-Task exercise, the students are
given materials to create their own book in groups and present it to the class.
Through these actions, the general and specific objectives in the lesson plan
can be fully achieved.
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11. Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension 11

12. Conclusion
An effective learning/teaching process of English must be comprehensive.
The young learner is easy to mold in the ways of a language; however,
appropriate, meaningful and engaging lessons are needed at early ages
because, otherwise, the child will lose interest and the objectives will not be
reached. Activities with stories are always welcome in elementary classrooms,
because for children, book reading is a treat. Therefore, when working with a
story, it is possible to reach deep into the child’s mind and explore endless
possibilities of information transfer. When working with intonation patterns, many
books lend themselves for teaching the topic successfully and in an entertaining
way. In the case of Dr. Seuss’ books, they can be easily adapted for the
purpose because of the basic vocabulary, the repetition of patterns and the
always surprising use of language.
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13. References
Al-Sibai, D. (2004) Intonation:ASuprasegmental Aspect of the English Language.
Catford, J. C. (1992). Prosodic Features. In A Practical Introduction to Phonetics
(pp. 172-186).Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gilbert, J.B (1984) Clear Speech. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hewings, M. (1995, August) Tone Choice in the English Intonation of Non-Native
Speakers.International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language
Teaching , 33, 251-265. Retrieved
Ranalli, J. M. Discourse Intonation: To Teach or not to Teach? Birmingham:
University ofBirmingham.Retrieved May 14, 2004, from
http://www.cels.bham.ac.uk/resources/essays/Rannali4.pdf
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14. Appendix
A
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