Julia Damion

INTR 616
Integrating Pronunciation Application: Adverb Clauses and Non-Final Rising Intonation
April 28, 2017

Context and Audience

This lesson on adverb clauses of time by Azar would be appropriate for high school students
(or adults) of at least intermediate proficiency. I will assume for the purposes of this exercise
that it is being taught to a high school EFL class of the intermediate level.

Pronunciation Target

The pronunciation target that I would like to introduce in this lesson is the non-final rising
intonation patterns (the UP-FALL-RISE-TO-MID pattern and the non-final DOWN-RISE
pattern). Because the pronunciation instruction will only comprise a portion of the lesson, for
time’s sake, I will not be focusing so much on differentiating between the two patterns so
much as with developing students’ abilities to perceive and use the rising intonation pattern
with adverb clauses of time, in contexts when the adverb clause is not in a sentence-final
message unit (e.g. “When the phone rang, the baby woke up.”). The purpose is to show
students that, when there is more information to come, they should use a rising intonation
pattern rather than a falling pattern.

Student Backgrounds

For the purposes of this lesson, it is assumed that the students have had some pronunciation
training and have already been introduced to the intonation patterns UP-FALL (for
statements and wh- questions) and UP-RISE (for yes/no questions), but that they have had
little to no explicit instruction regarding non-final intonation patterns (UP-FALL-RISE and
non-final DOWN-RISE), and are likely not aware of its presence and function. The
pronunciation activities in this lesson will thus focus on familiarizing students with the non-
final rising intonation patterns, with further practice carried on in future lessons.

Due to this prior training, students will be aware that intonation is important and that
speaking with the proper intonation patterns will increase intelligibility. It will still be
important, in this lesson, to make clear the contexts in which these patterns are used, and for
students to have practice hearing the patterns, but the concept of intonation will not be brand-
new to them.

Introducing the activity

The main activity would be introduced after the Chart 5-2 “Using Adverb Clauses to Show
Time Relationships,” on page 72. The rationale for inserting it then is so that students will
have time to focus on the new forms before delving into intonation.

To introduce the pronunciation topic, before looking at Chart 5-2, I would go back to Chart
5-1 (p. 70) and point out that “When the phone rang, the baby woke up” and “The baby woke
up when the phone rang” have the same meaning; however, the adverb clauses carry different
intonation. I will ask the students to listen to me say the sentences, and then tell me what the
difference is in how I say them, and why they are different (i.e. non-final rising intonation
means there is more information to come). I will then ask them to listen to me say some of

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the sentences in Chart 5-2, and to pay special attention to the italicized phrases (which
indicate adverb clauses). I will walk through (a)-(d) of Chart 5-2 with the students, marking
the italicized phrases with rising/falling arrows (for rising/falling intonation) and having
students repeat after me (e.g. sentence (a) “After she graduates, she will get a job” would be
marked with a rising arrow on “graduates”; sentence (c) “I will leave before he comes”
would have a falling arrow on “comes”). After a few sentences, the students will try a few
select sentences on their own, listening to and repeating after me. The activity that follows
will give students further practice with perception and move into production.

Description of Main Activity

This activity is drawn from a suggested activity in our readings, “Phrasing and Storytelling”
(Levis & Grant, 2005, p. 16), modified to fit the time constraints of this class. The entire
activity should last approximately 15 minutes, or no more than one-quarter of class time.

A) The teacher explains that using adverb clauses rising is especially useful when we are
telling our friends stories, because it means that there is more information to come.
B) The teacher distributes a short narrative to the students (1-2 paragraphs) about an
incident that happened to her on vacation/last weekend. The teacher controls for
sentence length (no more than 7 words per message unit) and limits the use of rising
intonation patterns to message units containing sentence-initial adverb clauses. An
example sentence is: “By the time I got back, it was already dark.” The story would
include both sentence-initial and non-initial adverb clauses (at least 3 of each).
Students will first hear the story once without looking at the transcript, marking their
paper/book whenever they hear a rising intonation pattern. A short poll will follow to
see how many rising intonation patterns students heard. This is to judge whether
students are able to consistently hear the pattern.
C) For the second reading, students will look at the transcript of adverbial clauses and
mark them with rising or falling arrows. Students will then report on the found adverb
clauses and, as a group, say them orally with the teacher’s guidance. Afterwards, the
students will pair up and read the story aloud with a partner, and the teacher will
circle. Time permitting, the teacher will call on students to read select sentences from
the story.

For homework, the students will write a short narrative (8-10 sentences) using at least three
sentence initial adverb clauses and two non-initial adverb clauses. Production practice will
follow the next class period.

Reflection
The goal of this integration is to have students become aware of non-final rising patterns and
know how and when they are used with adverb clauses of time. This pronunciation topic is
highly related to the grammar focus of the lesson. The approaches I focused on for this lesson
were “Syllabus-Inspired Pronunciation Work” (approach #6) and “Activity-Based
Pronunciation Focus” (#5). The grammar focus of this lesson naturally lent itself to a focus
on non-final intonation patterns (hence approach #6). As non-final intonation patterns are
essential to narratives, the main activity (and subsequent homework) shows how
pronunciation can be taught with communication as the end goal. This assignment has made
me aware of the possibilities for integrating pronunciation into a syllabus even when
pronunciation is not explicitly mentioned in the curriculum, and how our pronunciation
training can help us do this appropriately, with a focus on authentic communication.