The fox and the grapes

A fox saw some nice grapes. “They look good,” he said. “I want to eat them, but they are too high for me. I must try jumping for them”.

He jumped and he jumped. Again and again he jumped but he could not reach the grapes. So he said, “I can see now that they are green. They are not sweet. I do not like green grapes. They are sour. I don’t want them.” So he went away without any.

He knew that the grapes were really very nice. He just said they were sour because he could not reach them.

Moral: It is silly to say that you do not want something just because you cannot have it.

Task 8. Listen to the following dialogues and exercises [Thompson:43-47], concentrate on the intonation of special questions. Write them down, lay stress-and-tone marks, give the tonograms. Formulate the rule of the intonation organising special questions and their grammatical structure. Do it in writing.

Ex.47, Listen to a television interviewer interviewing Gloriette Harrod, the film-star:

Interviewer: Miss Harrod, a question on everyone’s lips, I’m sure... How many films have you appeared in?

G.Harrod: Why does everyone always ask me that?

Interviewer: Well, I read somewhere it was about a hundred and twenty.

G.Harrod: Where did you read that? Come on... let’s look forwards instead of backwards.

Interviewer: O.K. What’s the title of your next film?

G.Harrod: Who’s asking the question?

Interviewer: Well, I thought, I was, but it...

G.Harrod: No... that’s the title: “Who’s asking the question?”

Task 9. Exercises based on the text of the fable.

Sound Practice

A. Listen to the fable. Transcribe the words containing the phonemes you have learnt. Practise their reading.

/

/

/



















/

/

//

//

B. Listen to the combinations of words, define phonetic processes taking place at the junction of words.

Near a pond (linking /)

bad boy (loss of plosion)

the other (qualitative soft reduction)

the frogs (qualitative hard reduction, devoiced  vocalized /)

shouted the (dental //)

not do (loss of plosion)

would not (nasal plosion)

not like (lateral plosion)

to play (qualitative hard reduction, lateral plosion)

boys went (labialized )

was their (dental /z/)

it will (labialized //)

make them (fricative plosion)

looked for (loss of plosion ,/, fricative plosion /)

front (devoiced /)

like to (loss of plosion)

stones (non-aspirated /t/ before //)

stones thrown (dental )

like what (labialized , devoiced //)

for us (linking /)

let’s (fricative plosion)

it was (labialized //)

C. Listen to the following sound contrasts, practise their pronunciation, and transcribe the words.

/





/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

//

/

/

/

/

/

D. Transcribe the following words and put them in the right column according to the type of a stressed vowel in them.

One, four, boys, out, to, pond, some, frogs, home, other, come, on, of, so, looked, for, something, throw, doing, not, hopped, onto, floating, front, stop, shouted, you, would, stones, no, moral, done.

//	//	//	//	//	//	//	//

E. Listen to the following words, write them down, count the number of letters and phonemes they consist of:

four (4,2), play (4,3), some (4,3), lived (5,4), saw (3,2), said (4,3), other (5,3), water (5,4), looked (6,4), something (9,6), throw (5,3), little (6,4), what (4,3) were (4,2), doing (5,4), hopped (6,4), floating (8,6), leaf (4,3), shouted (7,5), would (5,3), moral (5,5), people (6,4), which (5,3), done (4,3), stop (4,4), jump (4,4), bad (3,3), home (4,3).

F. Listen to the sentences, write them down, lay stresses and tone marks, transcribe the sentences, define qualitative and quantitative changes of vowels in them. Do it in writing.

1. Some frogs lived in the pond.

2. One bad boy saw the frogs and said to the other boys, “Come on! Let’s make them jump out of the water. It will be fun!”

3. So he hopped onto a floating leaf in front of the boys.

4. You would not like to have stones thrown at you if you were frogs.