Speaking Skills

UNIT 3STRUCTURE 3.1 Introduction 3.2 What is phonetics ? 3.3 The Syllable 3.4 Features of English Speech 3.5 Aspects of Spoken English Workbook-2C 3.0 OBJECTIVES In this unit you will understand the role of phonetics in learning to speak English learn to discriminate between sounds learn to identify syllables learn to identify syllables get an insight into the role of weak forms and tones in English speech 3.1 INTRODUCTION PRONUNCIATION

All children 'pick up' their mother tongue almost effortlessly and learn to speak it without any problems. They don't think of sounds, stress or intonation when learning to speak they just acquire the language. However, this is not the case when we set out to learn a second or foreign language. We hear a set of sounds that are different from that in our mother tongue,wesee a different way of using these sounds and we encounter a different rhythm of speech. Think of a person from Kerala hearing Punjabi for the first time,or imagine an Urdu speaker listening to Russian for the first time. I'm sure the persons would think that they are listening to gobbledegook! However, after being exposed to the new language for a few days/weeks, the listeners would start identifying the sounds, then words and later sentences. This is the beginning of learning to speak a new language. But this process would need a lot of time, and the listeners would have to be exposed to a lot of the target language. If, on the other hand, a learner were presented with the sounds of a particular language, how these sounds combined to make words and how words combined to make meaningful sentences that were acceptable, then the process of learning to speak a new language would become much easier and quicker. Let's consider English and see how phonetics can help us in the process of acquiring speaking skills

92

Speaking Skills
3.2 WHAT IS PHONETICS? Phonetics is a field of study that deals with how we use our breathing apparatus (lungs)and organs of speech (lips, teeth, tongue, larynx and vocal cords) to produce sounds. Each language uses a unique set of sounds and a phonetician maps these out. 3.2.1 Students often ask if we need phonetics to be able to speak English. If you lived in an English speaking country you would pick up the language without phonetics or grammar! Since we do not live in such a country, we need the help of disciplines like phonetics to learn pronunciation. You will agree that it is necessary to pronounce a word as correctly as possible otherwise, we will not be able to communicate. English is a language that has 26 letters in its alphabet, but the number of sounds it has are 44 (20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds). So, the same letter of the alphabet has different pronunciations. For example , take the letter 'a'. Check how it is pronounced in these words: father a man late alone Since phonetics deals with sounds, it has its own set of symbols that represent each of the sounds of English. (You will find a chart at the end of the unit with the phonetic symbols of English.) Dictionaries say how a word is pronounced using these symbols. A few sample entries from dictionaries are given below. alight/lart/verb [1] (written) alight (from sth) to get off a bus, train, etc alimony / noun [U] money that you have to pay by law to your former wife or husband after getting divorced all determiner, pron 1 the whole of a thing or of a period of time: All (of) the food has gone. They've eaten all of it. They've eaten it all. This money is all yours. All of it is yours. all week/month/year. He worked hard all his life. 2 every one of a group: All (of) my children can swim. My children can all swim. She's read all (of) these books. She's read them all. The people at the meeting all voted against the plan. All of them voted against the plan. 3 everything that; the only thing that: I wrote down all I could remember. All I've eaten today is one banana. New Oxford Intermediate Learner's Dictionary, 2000, page 17 cub/ / k?b noun [C] a young bear, fox, lion, etc cube/ / noun 1 [C] a solid object with six square sides of the same size. kju?b Cut the cheese into small cubes . 2 the cube of sth the number you get when you multiply a particular number by itself twice. The cube of 3 is 27 . See also: ice cube. Cambridge Learner's Dictionary, 2001, page 162 If you come across a word whose pronunciation you don't know, you can use a dictionary and found out how it is said. 93

Speaking Skills
Check your progress 1. How can phonetics help us to learn to pronounce English words?

2. How many sounds are there in English?

3.2.2

PHONETICS AND SPOKEN ENGLISH

There is another aspect of spoken English that is very important: word accent or stress. When we pronounce an English word of more than one syllable, we say it in such a way that one of the syllables sounds louder than the other/s. If we do not do this, listeners will either not understand the word or they will misunderstand the message we are trying to convey. Given below are lists of words with typical word accent/ stress patterns. In the following words, the first syllable is said with ar tist ag ri cul - ture ba-sic love ly ad ver tise In this set of words, the second syllable is said with greater force. ba na na be lieve dic ta tion can teen In this set of words, the third syllable is more prominent than the others. cig ga rette po li ti cian A dictionary uses ['] mark to show which the accented syllable is. English would have been easier to learn to speak if the word accent/stress remained the same in words even when we added a suffix. For example : honest - honesty Look at the following set of words. The accented word is in bold.

94

Speaking Skills
ar tist a ca de my ce le brate e du cate bo ta ny ar tis tic a ca de mic ce le bra tion e du ca tion bo ta ni cal

You can see how the word accent changes when suffixes are added. However, in many other words, the accented syllable does not change when suffixes are added. beau ty ba sic cli nic dan ger ma nage or der se cond di rect bi o lo gy rea son beau ti ful ba si cal ly cli ni cal dan ger ous ma na ger or der ly se cond ly di rec tor bi o lo gist rea so na ble

3.2.2.1 Some words in English can function as verbs and nouns. The word accent/ stress in these words changes according to the function. Verb pre sent per mit con duct im port con vict Noun pre sent per mit con duct im port con - vict

There are many words that change their function without changing the accent/stress pattern. Verb de bate ac count hon our or der ex haust Noun de bate ac count hon our or der ex haust

95

Speaking Skills
3.2.3 After reading about word accent/stress patterns, you might ask: Do I need to learn the pronunciation of each word in English separately ?

Well, you don't have to. There are a few useful rules that you can apply to words. These will help you to pronounce the words with the correct word accent/ stress. 3.2.3.1 Word accent/ stress does not change with the plural, past tense and present participle suffixes. Plurals -es suc cess dis ease Past tense -ed be head com mit Present participle -ing be gin im pose suc cess es dis eas es be head ed com mit ted be gin ning im pos ing

3.2.3.2 Word accent / stress does not change with the following suffixes: -age -ance -er -ess -ful -hood -ice -ish -ive -less -ly -ment -ness -or -ship 'cover 'coverage ap'pear ap'pearance in'side in'sider 'author 'authoress 'beauty 'beautiful 'mother 'motherhood 'coward 'cowardice 'devil ' devilish a'buse a'busive 'power 'powerless 'definite 'definitely a'dorn a'dornment 'clever 'cleverness col'lect col'lector 'leader 'leadership

Note ['] mark is used to indicate the accented or stressed syllable. 96

Speaking Skills
3.2.3.3 Words ending in ion take the accent on the second syllable. Example : con 'nec tion o 'ra tion du 'ra tion spe cu 'la tion

3.2.3.4 Words ending in ity take the accent on the third last syllable. Example : e lec 'tri ci ty e 'nor mi ty ca 'pa ci - ty ve 'lo ci ty

Check your progress 1.What is word accent or word stress?

2. How many 'rules' are there about word accent? What are they?

3. What is the best resource to check how words are pronounced?

DO WORKBOOK LESSON 1 3.3 THE SYLLABLE

While discussing word accent, we have divided the words in to syllables. Before you continue reading, think of a definition for a syllable and write it below. A syllable is What is a syllable? Words are made up of vowel sounds and consonant sounds. A syllable is a unit of sound containing a vowel sound alone as in eye or a vowel and one or more consonant sounds as in you, stop, straight. It is important to be able to identify the syllable to be able to use word accent or word stress correctly. In English, spellings can be deceptive; a word like only has four letters and two syllables (only), whereas straight has eight letters but only one syllable! DO WORKBOOK LESSON 2 3.4 FEATURES OF ENGLISH SPEECH

Let us move on to two other features of English speech that give the language its unique characteristics. 97

Speaking Skills
3.4.1 WEAK FORMS I want a cup of tea . Try to say it naturally, as if you are asking someone for a cup of tea. Now say it again, this time giving each word the same amount of importance. Which sounds better? It's the first version, right? Doesn't the second version sounds as if you are imitating a machine gun firing? Which version sounds like English? When we speak in English, we stress certain words that are important for conveying the meaning, while the others are not voiced strongly. For example, in the sentence above, we would stress the following words: I ' want a ' cup of ' tea . Look at the words that are stressed. They are all content or lexical words. Content or lexical words are nouns main verbs adjectives adverbs demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those) interrogative words (who, which, where, when, why etc) The words that are usually not stressed are grammatical or structure words. These are articles (a, an, the) personal pronouns (I, he, she etc) helping verbs (am, is, have, has, could, would, will etc) prepositions (in, on, with, by etc) conjunctions (and, but, so etc) Look at this sentence:

In English, many grammatical or structure words have two forms: a strong form and a weak form. The strong form is used when a word is stressed to convey a particular meaning and the weak form is used in normal speech. For example, in the phrase bread and butter the weak form of 'and' is The sound is reduced to /n/ and the phrase sounds like bread'n butter . Many shops display their names using the weak form of 'and'. For example Sugar 'n Spice the Bakers. In the sentence, I'm a teacher., the 'am' is reduced to /m/. However, in some cases, the strong form can be used. 98

Speaking Skills
(A person A talking to a glamorous woman B) A.So, what d'you do? B.I'm a teacher. A.Oh, really! B.Yes, I am a teacher.

Here, B is confirming the fact that she is a teacher, because Bseems to doubt it. A problem with Indians speaking English is the lack of weak forms. We tend to use the full form (I have instead of I've) and so our speech sounds un-English. If we pay attention to acquiring weak forms, we can develop an acceptable English speech rhythm and so communicate more effectively.

DO WORKBOOK LESSON 3

3.4.2

INTONATION

Intonation is the way our voice goes up and down when we speak. Look at this sentence: Ready to go If a person's voice drops we interpret it as a statement. If on the other hand, the voice goes up & then we hear it as a question. When the voice drops, we call it falling intonation and when it goes up,we call it rising intonation. In English, falling intonation signals a statement while rising intonation signals a question (particularly when no question words are used and the word order is the same.). Intonation signals a person's attitude. You can say Hello in a bored way or in a cheerful manner. On a telephone, where the person you are speaking to cannot see you, intonation plays a major role. You can sound cheerful and friendly or cold and unfriendly.

99

Speaking Skills
The falling intonation is used mainly in statements ? 'wh' questions in a neutral, business-like, information-getting way ? exclamations ? orders and commands ? tag questions, used for confirmation ? The rising intonation is used mainly in yes/no questions ? wh' questions in a warm friendly way ? incomplete utterances ? polite requests ? tag questions, eliciting information ?

Check your progress 1. What are weak forms?

2. Why is it important to use weak forms in speech?

3. What do we generally use the falling intonation for? DO WORKBOOK LESSON 4 3.5 ASPECTS OF SPOKEN ENGLISH

Other than these features there are aspects of spoken English that must be taken into account if we need to communicate effectively. The most important of these are: Loudness

100

Speaking Skills
We need to monitor the loudness of our voices based on the situation we are in. We do not speak loudly in hospitals or libraries; we speak quite loudly when traveling in an autorickshaw, because there is a lot of traffic noise. Tempo For the other person to understand what we are saying, we need to speak at an appropriate speed. We have to make adjustments and speak at a speed that is appropriate to the context. Many people equate fluency with speed . This is not correct. The test of whether the tempo all right is whether the listener can follow you comfortably. When speech is too slow, then the connection between words, phrases and sentences can be lost. The listener can 'lose' you in such situations. Continuity When we speak, our ideas should connect otherwise meaning will be lost. Long pauses by the speaker searching for ideas or appropriate language can make the listener lose interest and so lose the thread of continuity. Rhythm Each language has its own rhythm. The rhythm in English is achieved by the alteration of weak and strong forms. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect to learn, but it is essential if we want to communicate in English across the country and across the world. DO WORKBOOK LESSON 5 is

101

Speaking Skills
PHONETIC SYMBOLS CONSONANTS p b t d k g t? d? f v pen bad tea did cat got chain jam fall van thin this /pen/ /bd/ /ti?/ /d?d/ /kt/ /g? t/ /t?e?n/ /d?m/ /f??l/ /vn/ /?n/ /?s/ s z ? ? h m n l r j w so zoo shoe vision hat man no sing leg red yes wet /s??/ /zu?/ /?u?/ /'v??n/ /ht/ /mn/ /n??/ /s? / /leg/ /red/ /jes/ /wet/

VOWELS AND DIPHTHONGS i? i ? e ? ? ?? ? u u? see happy sit ten cat father got saw put actual too /si?/ /'hpi/ /s?t/ /ten/ /kt/ /'f??(r)/ /g? t/ /s??/ /p?t/ /'kt?u?l/ /tu?/ ? ?? ? e? ?? a? a? ?? ?? e? ?? cup bird about say go five now boy near hair pure /k?p/ /b??d/ /?'ba?t/ /se?/ /g?? / /fa?v/ /na?/ /b??/ /n??(r) /he?(r)/ /pj? ?(r)/

102

Speaking Skills
Key Words
acquire a language or language acquisition grammatical / structure word the learning of a language through exposure to it. Linguistic rules are developed unconsciously. words that have little meaning on their own, but show grammatical relationships.e.g.: and,to,the. in speech, the rasing or lowering of the pitch of the voice. Different languages have different intonotion patterns. words that have meaning when used alone. e.g.: book,happy,come. stress timed speech rhythm in which stressed / accented syllables are said to occur at equal intervals of time. In a syllable timed rhythm all syllables are said to recur at equal intervals, for e.g.: french. a letter or group of letters added at the end of a word to make view words. a single unit of speech. Vowel sounds can form a syllable on their own or combine with consonant sounds. one of the possible forms in which a word appears in speech. If a word is unstress it appears in its weak form ( / kn / = can ). If stressed or said in isolation, the strong form is used ( kn / = can ) the pronunciation of a word / syllable with more force than the surrounding words / syllables.

intonation

lexical / content word rhythm ( speech )

suffix

syllable

weak form

word accent / stress

103