Comprehension Practice

A. Listen to the fable. Write down your answers to the following questions revealing the plot of the fable.

1. What did a fir tree say to a bramble bush one day?

2. Where did the conversation take place?

3. Which words describe the beauty of the fir tree?

4. What made the bramble bush very unhappy?

5. Who came up the hill next day?

6. What was the purpose of their appearance on the hilltop?

7. Why did the men decide to chop down the fir tree?

8. What did the fir tree cry as it started to fall?

9. What is said in the moral of the fable?

B. Listen to the text, divide it into communicative blocks, entitle them.

C. Listen to the fable, find the logical centre of each communicative block and of the whole text. Write them down.

D. Listen to the jumbled sentences and put them in the right order to complete the fable.

a) You are small, ugly and untidy.

b) But next day some men carrying axes came up the hill.

c) People who are too proud may be sorry later.

d) I wish I were a bramble bush, then the men would not have cut me down.

e) They wanted to use it to make a new house.

f) This made the bramble bush very unhappy because he knew the fir tree was right.

g) Look at me, I am tall, strong, graceful and very beautiful.

h) One day, on a hilltop, a fir tree said to a bramble bush.

i) What good are you?

j) They started to chop down the fir tree.

k) “Oh dear!” cried the fir tree, as it started to fall.

Written Practice

A. Find in the fable 1) the adjectives and adverbs describing appearance and states; give their degrees of comparison; 2) the nouns used in plural, write them down in singular.

B. Find in the fable the reason the fir tree felt sorry it was not a bramble bush.

C. Comment on the moral describing the proud fir tree. Express your attitude towards arrogance. Do it in writing.

D. Write down your own story, which proves the moral of the fable.

Unit three

Task 1. Listen to the recorded words and word combinations. Practise their pronunciation. Write them in transcription.

complex tones

contour

curve (downward, upward)

dash

dot

head

Intonation

Intonation group

intonation pattern

kinetic tones

linking

nucleus

pause (silent: long and short, perceptive and voiced or filled)

pausation

pitch (high, mid, low)

pitch level

post-nuclear

pre-head

prenuclear

prominence

range

rate (speed) of tone changes

rhythm

rhythmic group

rhythmic structure

scale (Regular/Broken; Des­cending/Ascending; Stepping, Sliding, Scandent, Level )

simple tones

special Rise

static tones

suprasegmental level

tail (descending, ascending, level

tempo (rapid (accelerated), moderate, slow (decelerated)

terminal tone

tone

tonic syllable

tonogram (tonogramme)

tune (simple, compound)

vertical bars

vertical wavy bar

voice quality (timbre)

utterance (statements, questions, imperatives, exclamations)

utterance stress (full non-nuclear, partial, weak and nuclear)

Task 2. Match pairs of words which rhyme:

brain – reign

teeth – wreath

lost – tossed

foot – put

boast – post

weight – great

slight – height

death – breath

dull – skull

phrase – days

war – law

full – wool

chef – deaf

leaf – beef

glued – food

time – lime

skiver – diver

spring – string

love – dove

student – prudent

fate – great

night – light

eyes – wise

mean – keen

Task 3. Listen to the following words and word combinations, concentrate on the length of nasal sonorants. Remember: 1) a nasal sonorant is always short after a long vowel; 2) a nasal sonorant is always long after a short vowel namely: a) at the end of a word before a pause; b) inside a word before a voiced consonant; 3) a nasal sonorant is always short after a short vowel: a) if it is followed by a voiceless consonant; b) if it is followed by another vowel. Write the words you hear in the right columns.

a nasal + a long vowel	a nasal + a short vowel	a nasal + a short vowel + a voiceless consonant or another vowel

deem

seen

yawn

dim

sum

send

wind

wince

schemed

hence

skimp

romp

dinner

summer

jumped

manger

some

wanted

hungry

moral

bramble

hilltop

look tall

strong

small

ugly

untidy

knew

hill

new

fall

later

bone

ran

himself

mine

will

might

pond

home

fun

stones

things

done

when the horse

ran into

from a shop

ran off

don’t eat

don’t need

can’t eat

don’t like

fun for us

done to you

will jump

when he

fell more

come on

floating leaf

in front

Task 4. When the consonants  and  appear at the end of a word and the next one begins with a vowel they are known as linking  and . Listen to the recorded word combinations, transcribe them and lay stress-tone marks, record the word combinations.



/ 

//

/

/^./

/ /

/

/^./

/

/^. ^./

/

/

/

Task 5. Practise saying some other ways of linking words in phrases and tongue-twisters:

Southern England

wrap up warm

Northern Ireland

north easterly winds

the East Coast of England

the time of year

the cold front moves in over the Atlantic

Northern Ireland can expect the same

1. My aeroplane arrives in Australia at about eight o’clock in the evening.

2. Uncle Alfie and Auntie Elsie always go away at Easter.

3. Are you asking us to accept an offer of only eighty pounds?

4. Nicky and Laura are off to Italy and Austria again.

5. Bruno and Anna are arriving in an hour or so and they’re often early.

Task 6. Listen to the dialogues, practise reading them, linking the words smoothly. Lay stress-and-tone marks. Record the dialogues.

1. Bring a ring and that lovely string of pearls.

Any particular ring, Edwina?

Bring a diamond ring, Alfred. Something a bit special.

Yes. They’ll be putting everything in the window today.

Are you taking anything along, Alfred?

Something appropriate, my love.

Nothing obtrusive, Alfred?

I’m taking a brick, dear. [Mortimer:51]

2. After all, you’re only twenty-four, Ann.

Mother, at twenty-four a girl’s rather old.

At fifty-four a girl’s rather older, isn’t she?

But mother, I don’t suppose father even notices.

Father appreciates your mother “as nature intended”!

You’re always nice. Where are you going, by the way?

To my regular appointment with the hairdresser, if you want to know.

For a shampoo?

I have some grey hair, at the roots – which nature never intended! [Mortimer:55]

Task 7. Listen to the dialogues once again. Write down the words in which letters or their clusters represent the following phonemes /,,, ,, in stressed and unstressed syllables.

Task 8. Read the fable given below. Divide the sentences into syntagms, lay stresses and tone marks. Write down the words in the right column which are usually stressed, which are unstressed, as a rule, and the words which are sometimes stressed, defining the parts of speech they belong to. Practise reading the fable, record it.

Words which are usually stressed	Words which are usually unstressed	Words which are sometimes stressed
Raven (n.)	The (art.)	You (personal pron.)

Note: Short forms of parts of speech: adj. – adjective; adv. – adverb; art. – article; conj. – conjunction; part. – particle; n. – noun; v. – verb; prep. – preposition; pron. – pronoun.