Добавил:
ivanov666
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:Практическая фонетика первого иностранного языка. Шаг за шагом. Учебно-методическое пособие для студентов первого, второго курсов
.pdf
Generally a FASTER speaking speed signals urgency, excitement, passion or raw
emotion. It can lead the audience to expect something thrilling is going to occur. They hold their
breaths and go for the ride with you.
In contrast a SLOWER speaking rate signals importance, seriousness, or significant
ideas. Slow says: 'LISTEN UP! YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS.'
A new concept or new and perhaps, complex sequential information, may need to be
delivered slowly so the audience has time to grasp all of the ideas and their consequences before
moving on. 'Slow' is also useful for summarizing material.
The combination of slow, fast, slow, and medium speed adds interest to your speech
making it easier to listen to.
Time to PRACTICE
Exercises for pace
Ex.1. Pick an information loaded report from a newspaper or magazine. Go through it to
familiarize yourself with the flow of material and then read aloud. Make a note of which
passages need careful or slow reading and which can be taken at a faster rate. Re-read aloud until
you feel you have the mix of speeds right.
As an extension exercise read the report as if you were reading for an audience who knew
nothing about the subject. Note what changes you made and why.
Ex.2. Read a children's story silently several times to familiarize yourself with the flow.
Go through it again noting which passages would suit taking more quickly and which should
be slower. Read aloud listen carefully.
Ex.3. Record yourself across as many varying situations that you can to listen and analyse for
areas to improve.
Ex.4. Listen to speakers speaking well and consciously use them as role models.
6.Pause
Pauses are the planned silences occurring in speech. They are a very different breed from
the silence that happens as scrabble around inside your brain for the right word or phrase or the
panic pause because terror has suddenly glued your mouth shut.
A planned pause, well-judged silence achieves a lot of things for you as a speaker, and
for your listeners.
A pause in the right place at the right time gives you, the speaker:
● time to breathe
● time to consider what it is you're going to say next
● time to receive, and digest the feedback you're getting from your audience
A pause in the right place at the right time gives YOUR AUDIENCE:
● time to breathe
● time to let the images or ideas you've given them 'flower' in their minds
● time to summarize what's been said
● time to prepare for what may be coming next
In printed text of any sort punctuation is used to separate words. The varying punctuation
marks give information about how we should read and comprehend them.
51
They arrange the words in parcels, separating one unit from the next, so we can easily
unwrap / decode them one at a time. In short, punctuation allows us to make sequential sense of
printed material.
In speech, punctuation marks are implied in the way we deliver our words.
In her teaching Susan Dugdale used a counting system to help people with pausing:
● For a full stop or period, the count was 1,2
● For a comma, the count was 1
● For a semi-colon, the count was 1
● For a colon, the count was 1,2
● Between the end of one paragraph and the start of the next the count was 1, 2, 3
If you're a musician think of the comma, full stops/periods, colons and semicolons as
'rests' of varying lengths.
Do use the full stops/periods for breaths. They are the natural place to refuel. Running out
in the middle of a phrase breaks the beat and the sense.
Time to PRACTICE
Exercises for pause
Ex.4.
Select a piece of a poem, an informative article or an excerpt from a story to practice with.
Read it through silently or quietly to yourself several times to get the flow of ideas.
Read it aloud, listening or feeling for, how long the pauses should be.
The question as you listen to yourself is; are you maintaining the flow, intent and
meaning of the material? Does this vary according to audience?
5. Volume
Too loud …
Too soft …
Just right!
Volume is how loudly or quietly you speak. Too much is either direction is detrimental.
What we want is a balance - the ability to adapt easily to context and circumstances. The skill
involved with getting louder (or softer) is to maintain tone and pitch while altering the sound
level. Many people lose them both, particularly when they get louder. Shouting may guarantee
you get heard but it doesn't usually mean heard with pleasure. And the other down-side to
shouting is straining your voice. Good breath control is one of major keys to upping the volume
while maintaining tone and pitch.
Time to PRACTICE
Exercises for volume
Ex.1 Breath
Stand in front of a mirror or a partner. Make sure your feet are a comfortable shoulder width
apart. Pull yourself up straight and let your head sit square on your neck.
Place one hand on your stomach. Breathe in. You should feel your stomach rising and then
breathe out. This time your stomach falls. Watch your shoulders.
If they rise and fall noticeably you are most likely breathing off the top of your lungs! Try
until you can feel a definite rise and fall of your stomach. Keep relaxed.
52
Ex.2 Add voice
Maintain the breathing technique outlined above while adding voice. While watching
yourself to check for tension, (tightening of muscles), practice greeting yourself at ever
increasing distances from a mirror or your partner.
The first 'Hello Bob', is right up close. Take two steps back and repeat. Now take more steps
back and so on.
If you feel any tension in your throat or chest from forcing the sound, stop. Breathe and begin
again. It helps to imagine the sound arcing through the air, in a concentrated focused stream
to reach its target. The further away you get the more control you need to have over the
outflow of air carrying your words.
When you think you have a neutral 'Hello Bob' mastered, add emotional color. Say 'Hello
Bob', nastily, lovingly, sweetly while keeping relaxed.
Ex.3 Read out loud
Make sure your stance and breathing is good. Pinpoint a place at the far end of your room to
talk to. For example, use a painting on the back wall of the rehearsal hall. Read aloud from
your text, making sure you maintain your relaxed state while using as much vocal variety as
you can.
A good way to test you're working as you should is to do this exercise with a partner.
Have them stand at the far end of the room you're practicing in.
Give instructions to give you feedback on clarity, variety and pitch.
If you find yourself rising in pitch, check your breathing. When we tense, we strain the
throat and when that happens our vocal chords are restricted. The result is we force the pitch up
and limit the range or color we can put into our words.
A good speaker combines all the elements: pitch, tone, pace, pause and volume to create
a flexible vocal delivery fitting material and context.
6. Declamatory intonational style
This intonational style is also called by some as "artistic, acquired or stage". The scholars
suggest that this is a highly emotional and expressive intonational style, that is why it needs
special training. Attitudinal, volitional and intellectual (functions of intonation are of primary
importance here and serve to appeal to the mind, will and feelings of the listener. Most
commonly it is performed through all sorts of image-bearing devices which require rehearsing
and professional skills. This intonational style can be heard on the stage, on the screen, in a TV
studio or in a classroom during verse speaking and prose readings and recitations. Thus we
seethat it is always a written form of the language read aloud or recited. The declamatory reading
displays a great variety of intonation property as regards to the types of written texts. There is
almost endless variety in the way writers express themselves; but no matter how pleasurable the
way of writing may be meaning always comes first. In each case style, the way something has
been written, must be adapted to suit the subject matter. It is common knowledge that prose,
which describes an action or a series of actions to tell a story, is called narrative.
The prose is descriptive when scenes, objects, people, or even a person's feelings are
described in such a way that we can imagine them vividly. In good descriptive writing an author
builds up a picture in words in much the same way as an artist paints a landscape or a portrait.
The experimental data of the research works on the declamatory reading allow us to say
that its prosodic organization depends on the type of the literary text - descriptive; narrative,
53
dialogue; on the character of the described events, schemes and objects (humorous, tragic,
romantic, dreamy, imaginative and so on) and of course on the skills of the reader. But it is
always clearly marked and distinguished by its expressiveness, personal involvement on the part
of the author, by the emphasis, by the entire range of prosodic and paralinguistic effects and it is
all felt through the skilful reading. We would like to comment on the use of terminal tones in
initial and non-final intonation groups. The views of phoneticians differ here. G.Pinayeva, for
example, claims that the Low Rise now loses its connective function and gains the emphatic one.
Subsequently the falling-rising tone becomes more and more connective. Other scholars write
that the most typical nuclear tone used for the connection in non-final groups is the non-final low
falling or the midlevel tone. Evidently the solution lies in new experiments and the analysis of
the experimental data. We will try to suggest, however, that the choice of the terminal tone in
non-final intonation groups is determined by the emphasis. The expressive reading suggests the
Low or Medium Fall rather than the rising tones.
On the prosodic level the markers of the declamatory style reading are:
Timbre: concerned, personally involved, emotionally rich.
Levels and ranges: variable
Rate: slow, necessitated by the purpose of the reading: the complete understanding of the
author's message by the listener; changes in the speed of utterances are determined by the
syntactic structures, importance of information, and the degree of emphasis.
Pauses: long, especially between the passages. Internal boundary placement is always
syntactically or semantically predictable. A declamatory reading is distinctly marked by a great
number of prolonged emphatic pauses - the device used by the reader to underline the emphasis.
Rhythm: properly organized, the isochronic recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Terminal tones: common use of categoric low and high falls in final and even initial intonation
groups and on semantic centres; occasional use of rising and level tones to break the monotony
and in initial groups to connect segments of the phrase, to lead the listener on the later
developments.
54
VIII. Pronunciation, Pitching and Intonation Exercises for Self-Study
One the basic vocal exercises for improving the pitch range and relaxing your jaw is to
sing several combinations of vowels and consonant sounds, at different scales. These have to be
from high to low and the opposite. Tongue - twisters are great to relax the palate, throat, lips and
tongue, which are instrumental in the articulation of words and notes. As you already know
tongue twisters are great for improving pronunciation as well, as you give proper exercise to
your tongue and it can be twisted as you want. While you do the pitch related vocal exercises,
remember that starting these from an octave and range comfortable to you, normally the mid
range, is advisable. Then go on to the extremes of the range, but without straining your vocal
cords.
There are several more to add to this list of warm up exercises for the vocal cords. You
can get many free vocal warm up exercises on the internet. Eventually, though the purpose of all
these is the same. The first and foremost exercise is to help you gain control over your voice,
helps in breathing correctly, loosening as well as relaxing the tongue, jaw, palate and so on to
facilitate proper singing and finally to improve vocal range. That is all about improving your
voice.
The voice is easily affected by fatigue and tension, as well as by other health issues. If
something in your life is stressing you your voice may show the effect. Looking after your voice
includes using it properly (for more, see my post on voice production), and also doing vocal
warm ups.
Breathing development exercises
Breath control is the key to giving a good, clear speech to an audience. Get tips on proper
breathing exercises before and during a speech from a communications and public speaking
expert in this free instructional video series.
Ex.1 Try to read the following lyrics using the right breathing. Don`t try to read it at once.
The House That Jack Built
Retold by Judy Hamilton
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is a cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
55
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the maiden all- forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all- forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all- forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cock that crowed in the morn,
That woke the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all- forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the farmer that sowed the corn,
That fed the cock that crowed in the morn,
That woke the priest all shaven and shorn,
That married the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all- forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
56
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt,
That lay in the house that Jack built.
That was the house that Jack built
Geography Rap
These are places in the world.
Some you know, some you don‘t.
Some you'll visit, some you won‘t.
Some are near and some are far.
Some sound exotic like Zanzibar,
‗Cause these are places in the world.
Bombay, Cape May, Mandalay, Baton Bay,
Baghdad, Leningrad, Ashkhabad, Trinidad,
LA, Norway, Paraguay, Monterey,
Singapore, Ecuador, Bangalore, Baltimore.
These are places in the world.
Fiji, Sicily, Nagasaki, Tennessee,
Cairo, Quito, Borneo, Idaho,
Taiwan, Dijon, Saigon, Teheran,
Guatemala, Oklahoma, Argentina, North Dakota,
These are places in the world.
Some are new and some are old.
Some are hot and some are cold.
Some are low and some are high.
Some are wet and some are dry.
‗Cause these are places in the world.
Glasgow, Oslo, Fresno, Singtiyo,
Falkland, Auckland, Yucatan, Disneyland,
Libya, Namibia, Rumania, Pennsylvania,
Bora Bora, Walla Walla, Costa Rica, Bratislava,
These are places in the world.
Krakow, Chuangchiao, Moscow, Tokelau,
Dominique, Pikes Peak, Mozambique, Bitter Creek,
Warsaw, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, Cameroon,
Haifa, Mecca, Bethlehem, Jerusalem,
These are places in the world.
High on a mount, down on the plain,
Deep in the jungle in the middle of the rain,
Children laugh and children play,
Every where, every day.
‗Cause these are places in the world.
Did it work? You are great! Keep it up! If you fail the first time, do not despair. Perform
these exercises over and over again. Most importantly – is a regularity. Exercising is just 5-7
minutes a day, you will see how it will be useful for your voice and overall health!
57
Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking
friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to
each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and communicate more because you
begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words. All those words that you thought you
didn't understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself
understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.
ASSIMILATION
Assimilation is a process of alteration of speech sounds as a result of which one of the
sounds becomes fully or partially similar to the adjoining sound.
RULES OF ASSIMILATION
1. Modification of the place of obstruction and the active organ of speech.
a) The alveolar [t, d, n, l, s, z] are replaced by the dental variants when followed by the
interdental [∂, θ].
E.g.: eighth, breadth, tenth. Put that down! Read this! On the desk.
b) The post alveolar [t, d] are heard before the postalveolar sonorant [r].
E.g.: trip, true, trunk, dream, drink. At test, would read.
c) The bilabial nasal [m] and the alveolar nasal [n] become labiodental under the influence of
the following labiodental fricatives [f, v].
E.g.: triumph, infant. Come for me, ten forks.
2. Changes in the work of the vocal cords.
a) The sonorants [m, n, l, r, w, j] are partially devoiced when preceded by voiceless consonants
[s. p, t, k, f, θ, ȓ].
E.g.: small, slow, place, fly, square, try, stupid, at last, at rest.
b) The assimilative voicing or devoicing of the possessive suffix –‗s or –s‘, the plural suffix –
(e)s of the noun and of the third person singular present simple, the contracted forms of the verbs
―is‖ and ―has‖, the suffix –ed of the regular verbs.
E.g.: girls, books, Jack‟s, George‟s. That‟s write. Bob‟s gone out. Worked, lived, played,
watched.
3. Changes in the lip position.
Consonants followed by the sonorant [w] change their lip position. They become lip
rounded.
E.g.: twinkle, quite, swan, language.
4.Changes in the manner of the release of plosive consonants.
a) The loss of plosion: Plosives [t, d, b, p, k, g] lose plosion before other plosives and affricates
[tȓ, dȢ].
E.g.: act, bookcase, that chair, lamp post, what time, good, chance.
58
Tonic Stress and Emphatic Stress
An intonation unit almost always has one peak of stress, which is called 'tonic stress', or
'nucleus'. Because stress applies to syllables, the syllable that receives the tonic stress is called
'tonic syllable'. The term tonic stress is usually preferred to refer to this kind of stress in
referring, proclaiming, and reporting utterances. Tonic stress is almost always found in a content
word in utterance final position. Consider the following, in which the tonic syllable is
underlined: I'm going.
I'm going to London.
I'm going to London for a holiday.
A question does arise as to what happens to the previously tonic assigned syllables. They
still get stressed, however, not as much as the tonic syllable, producing a three level stress for
utterances. Then, the following is arrived at, where the tonic syllable is further capitalized:
I'm going to London for HOliday.
Emphatic Stress
One reason to move the tonic stress from its utterance final position is to assign an
emphasis to a content word, which is usually a modal auxiliary, an intensifier, an adverb, etc.
Compare the following examples. The first two examples are adapted from. Roach (1983:144).
i. It was very BOring. (unmarked)
ii. It was VEry boring. (emphatic)
i. You mustn't talk so LOUDly. (unmarked)
ii. You MUSTN'T talk so loudly. (emphatic)
Some intensifying adverbs and modifiers (or their derivatives) that are emphatic by
nature are (Leech & Svartvik, 1.975:135):
indeed, utterly, absolute, terrific, tremendous, awfully, terribly, great, grand, really, definitely,
truly, literally, extremely, surely, completely, barely, entirely, very (adverb), very (adjective),
quite, too, enough, pretty, far, especially, alone, only, own, -self.
Contrastive Stress
In contrastive contexts, the stress pattern is quite different from the emphatic and nonemphatic stresses in that any lexical item in an utterance can receive the tonic stress provided
that the contrastively stressed item can be contrastable in that universe of speech. No distinction
exists between content and function words regarding this. The contrasted item receives the tonic
stress provided that it is contrastive with some lexical element (notion.) in the stimulus utterance.
Syllables that are normally stressed in the utterance almost always get the same treatment they
do in non-emphatic contexts. Consider the following examples:
a) Do you like this one or THAT one?
b) I like THIS one.
Many other larger contrastive contexts (dialogues) can be found or worked out, or even
selected from literary works for a study of contrastive stress. Consider the following:
She played the piano yesterday. (It was she who...)
She played the piano yesterday. (She only played (no harmed) ...)
She played the piano yesterday. (It was the piano that...)
She played the piano yesterday. (It was yesterday...)
New Information Stress
In a response given to a wh-question, the information supplied, naturally enough, is
stressed. That is, it is pronounced with more breath force, since it is more prominent against a
59
background given information in the question. The concept of new information is much clearer
to students of English in responses to wh-questions than in declarative statements. Therefore, it
is best to start with teaching the stressing of the new information supplied to questions with a
question word: a) What's your NAME
b) My name's GEORGE.
a) Where are you FROM?
b) I'm from WALES.
a) Where do you LIVE
b) I live in BONN
a) When does the school term END
b) It ends in MAY.
a) What do you DO
b) I'm a STUdent.
The questions given above could also be answered in short form except for the last one,
in which case the answers are: George, Wales, in Bonn, in May. In other words, 'given
information is omitted, not repeated. In the exchange:
a) What's your name?
b) (My name's) George.
The 'new' information in this response is 'George.' The part referring to his name is given
in the question, so it may be omitted.
Regarding the significance of new information declarative statements, Ladefoged
(1982:100) states:
'In general, new information is more likely to receive a tonic accent than material that has
already been mentioned. The topic of a sentence is less likely to receive the tonic accent than the
comment that is made on the topic.'
Furthermore, Bolinger (1968:603) notes that speakers '.depend on stress to highlight the
most important and informative idea in the sentence.' (the italics is original). So the stressed
lexical item is that which carries the information enveloping communicative intent and purpose.
The information in the stressed item is the core of the message within the utterance. Therefore, it
is the most important element in the utterance.
Consider the following example taken from Dickerson (1989:20, cited in Levis, 1999:45):
a) It sounds like there was some excitement last night.
b) Didn't you hear? There was a torNAdo in the area.
Here in this example, the most prominent information appears to be stored in 'tornado'
rather than the last content word in the utterance.
A unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm, associated
with the pitch of voice (Roach, 1983:113). This certain pattern of voice movement is called
'tone'. A tone is a certain pattern, not an arbitrary one, because it is meaningful in discourse. By
means of tones, speakers signal whether to refer, proclaim, agree, disagree, question or hesitate,
or indicate completion and continuation of turn-taking, in speech.
60
Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]