However, teaching materials currently in use
still tend to draw upon more traditional accounts which have a way of
fixing intonation patterns too rigidly and without reference to context. This
state of affairs shifts a great deal of responsibility onto the teacher, who
will need to inform him- or herself about intonation in the language he or
she is teaching, and exploit teaching materials accordingly. The decision as
to whether and how to tackle intonation will depend on, amongst other
things, the specific needs of the learners and on the teaching situation.
Whether or not this decision entails the explicit teaching of certain aspects
of intonation or not, it would certainly be desirable to foster in learners a
general understanding of the processes involved in verbal interaction along
the lines we suggest in this book. Such a sensitization of learners to the
communicative role of intonation may prepare their minds for further
learning when the limits of teaching have been reached.
8 Focus on stress
8.1 Identifying and producing stressed syllables
Our discussion in Section One showed that stress is a universal phenom-
enon. We also saw that its perception is due to the combined effect of
various factors such as loudness, pitch, duration, and quality. Furthermore,
the exact weighting of the different factors is language-specific, with
loudness generally playing a lesser role than one would expect. The
complexity of the stress phenomenon, and the interplay of its different
components, has for a long time discouraged textbook writers from paying
due attention to it. As far as pronunciation course-books are concerned,
stress has only recently come to figure more prominently on the agenda.
TASK 74
Consider the two extracts. Which of the explanations is more
consistent with our discussion in 4.1?
Extract 1
Syllable Stress
'In words of more than one syllable, the syllables do not all have
equal stress. There is usually one that has particularly strong stress.
This means that on this syllable your voice is louder and usually
pitched higher, and you hang on to the syllable considerably longer
than on the other syllables of that word. Different stressing can
change the meaning of a word or make it completely unrecognizable.'
(Ponsonby 1987:14)
Extract 2
Stress
'In English some syllables are much more prominent than others. This
prominence, or stress, is important to make speech clear. There are
three main signals of stress:
1 Pitch change
2 Length of syllable
3 Vowel quality
Together these signals make syllables sound louder'.
(Rogerson and Gilbert 1990: 11)
98
Demonstration
Extract 2 raises awareness of the importance of stress for clear speech in
general. Extract 1, while also singling out the factors involved in syllable
stress, limits the issue immediately to the question of word-stress and thus
to a specific (lexical) function of stress. In fact, this is the way in which
stress is introduced in nearly all textbooks that pay attention to the issue at
all.
> TASK 75
Consider the following exercise on word-stress from the first unit of
a general English course. What do you think is the main point of the
exercise?
O Pronunciation: stress. Listen and repeat.
Dn
Dan
oD
England
Italy
Japan
English
Germany
Chinese
Britain
Switzerland
D D D D
British
an D
Italian
German
China
Japanese
American Australian
(Swan and Walter 1984: 9)
This technique is probably successful in pointing out that in English word-
stress can fall in different places (as opposed to Czech, for example, where
stress generally falls on the first syllable), while underscoring learners'
intuitions about the 'strength' of stressed syllables. Wong (1987) suggests
that work on stressed syllables should be more explicit than this. In view
of the fact that syllable duration seems to play a far more important role in
English than in many other languages (see 4.1), this seems to be a good
idea. Wong's suggestion exploits kinaesthetic experience (the
simultaneous activation of different sensations such as hearing and
movement) to achieve this.
TASK 76
Do you think the kinaesthetic experience offered here can help in
learning to pick up the differences between stressed and unstressed
syllables?
1 Take a set of 3-syllable words such as 'oranges', 'pineapples',
'computer'. Mark the syllable lengths and ask students to note the
differences in length as they listen to you reading each one.
2 Before the second reading, distribute rubber bands to each stu-
dent. Show them how to stretch the rubber band with their two