Intonation

Musical pattern of ups and downs

Intonation: to express emotions and attitudes

Allow us to express : finality, confidence,

interest, surprise, doubt, joy, pain, irony,

anger, boredom, gratefulness and so on.

In English, there are three intonation

patterns:Rise

Full fallPartial fall

These different musical patterns communicate different messages to

your listener.

Compare the following two sentences:

“He’s 40 years old.” versus

“He’s 40 years old?!”

Do you hear the difference?

1. making a statement, reporting a man’s age.2. a high pitch to show surprise.

De-stress your function words and stress your content words.

Stress: content words.

De-stress: function words.

Contrasting

Rising intonation can be used to

emphasize two contrasting thoughts or facts in the

same sentence.

Contrasting

Falling intonation:

Use the falling intonation pattern to tell the listener you are finished with a sentence.

Example“I really want to improve my

pronunciation.”

1. go up on the focus word; then

2. fully fall at or after the focus word to tell your listener that you have completed the sentence.

3. Tells the listener, “Now, you can speak!”

Rising Intonation

Rising intonation at the end of a sentence means "I have more to say".

New information

In the first sentence, the word "walking" shows important new information.

We already know that the speaker went walking, so in the second sentence "walking" does not show new information.

The content words that show new information, are "stopped" and "flowers".

Rising intonation for the first item in the list and falling intonation for the last.

Falling intonation indicates the end of the list.

Listing Items

Exclamatory sentence

Direct Address

yes/no questions

I’m traveling to New York today, then to California

next week.

I would love to get a Masters degree in America, the

UK, or Australia.

She prefers cooking at home over eating out.

We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.

They really shouldn’t have gone out without asking

our permission first.

My cell phone number is (347) 555-1212.

You can text me and let me know where we’re

meeting.