Intonation in English is an important part of pronunciation for ESL teachers

I have to say that something that is sometimes overlooked when teaching English pronunciation to ESL students is intonation. For ESL students, English intonation is an important part of learning English because it not only gives English rhythm, but also helps you understand what a person is saying.

The intonation of English comes from the extra stress (emphasis) that native speakers and good non-native speakers place on certain words. Rhythm in English comes from the emphasis placed on some words and not others. Native speakers put more emphasis on keywords when speaking to make them stand out. The keywords are the nouns, the main verbs, the adjectives and some other words when necessary. If you can only hear the stressed words, you will still be able to understand most of what the person said. You will also notice that native speakers from different countries may place different emphasis on some words.

Native speakers listen to stressed words because unstressed words are not as important for understanding what is being said. “I like to walk in the park because it gives me an idea of ​​nature.” is a complete sentence. The words you emphasize can have a big effect on your listeners’ understanding. The following two sentences show you what happens if certain words are emphasized correctly or incorrectly:

Correctly stressed – “I like to walk…park…it gives me…feel…nature.” From this you have a good idea of ​​what the person said.

If the emphasis is on unimportant words, you might hear “in the… because… a… for.” If these are the only words you hear, it will be difficult for you to understand what was said.

The example shows that the emphasized words make a difference in your understanding of what the person has said. From this we can see that placing the emphasis correctly is important for speaking understandable English. This extra emphasis on the word is done in a number of ways, but the most common is to lengthen (make longer) the main vowel sound in the word. This emphasis helps to understand what the person has said and also produces the rhythm of the English. This makes intonation an important part of pronunciation because it makes important words stand out, gives the English language rhythm, and affects the pronunciation of stressed and unstressed words.

Given the importance of intonation, it is surprising that some or many ESL teachers do not spend more time emphasizing intonation when teaching English. I see this as a problem because not emphasizing the correct word and emphasizing the wrong word can cause comprehension problems for the listener. You can also change the pronunciation of the word so that it sounds like a different word. This is because a stressed vowel sound can sound different than an unstressed vowel sound for the same vowel. It is the difference between the long vowel sounds and the short vowel sounds for a particular vowel.

The effects of incorrect intonation are that putting emphasis on the wrong word can change the vowel sound in two words. The two are the one that you stressed but should not have stressed, and the word that should have stressed and did not. The difference is that a long vowel sound became a schwa sound (É™) and a schwa vowel sound is now a long vowel sound. Incorrect intonation will cause this. The unstressed vowel sound may not be the schwa sound, but the short vowel sound will usually be different from the long vowel sound. This decreases the listener’s understanding, which will lead to misunderstanding or misunderstanding.

The pronunciation of the incorrectly emphasized word and the incorrectly unemphasized word affects the listener’s understanding. The keyword does not stand out and the listener has trouble understanding what is being said. There is more confusion when the highlighted word is not a keyword and is not essential to understand what the speaker is saying. Also, changing the vowel sound in a word can lead to more confusion, because the word can now sound like a different, unrelated word.

This is why ESL teachers should spend some time working on their students’ intonation as part of their pronunciation learning. A good method is to take an audio or video file of which you have the transcript. First, have students identify the nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and mark them. Then check if all the words to be emphasized have been found by listening to the words that the speaker emphasizes. Students can now practice speaking along with the person on the file and put the same emphasis on the same words as the speaker on the file. This can be repeated until the intonation of the students matches the person on the file. You can also assign this type of exercise as homework for students. If you search the Internet for something like “English Speaking Emphasis,” or something similar, you’ll find some sites that have helpful intonation exercises.

To see if your students need help with intonation, listen to the rhythm of the students when they speak. Sounds good? If it sounds too rhythmic or isn’t right, you can work with them to correct it. If the wrong words are emphasized or if some of the correct and some of the incorrect words are emphasized, you can work with them. Start with simple sentences and tell them which words are emphasized and why, and then ask them to read them along with you.

After correcting or improving the intonation, the teacher can work on other pronunciation problems. They will now be more apparent when many incorrect long vowel sounds are removed and many schwa sounds do not become long vowel sounds.

As you can see, intonation is important to non-native English speakers because of the effect it has on the listener’s pronunciation and comprehension. If you work a little more on your English intonation, you will find that your ESL students’ pronunciation will improve as well.