Staircase Intonation So what is intonation in American English? What do Americans do? We go up and down staircases. We start high and end low. Every time we want to stress a word or an idea, we just start a new staircase. That sounds simple enough, b...
Grammar in a Nutshell Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Grammar But Were Afraid to Use English is a chronological language. We just love to know when something happened, and this is indicated by the range and depth of our verb tenses. I had al...
The Miracle Technique Regaining Long-Lost Listening Skills The trouble with starting accent training after you know a great deal of English is that you know a great deal about English. You have a lot of preconceptions and, unfortunately, misconceptio...
Reduced Sounds The Down Side of Intonation Reduced sounds are all those extra sounds created by an absence of lip, tongue, jaw, and throat movement. They are a principal function of intonation and are truly indicative of the American sound. Exercise...
Statement Intonation with Pronouns When you replace the nouns with pronouns i e old information, stress the verb. They eat them. As we have seen, nouns are new information; pronouns are old information. In a nutshell, these are the two basic intonati...
Word Groups and Phrasing Pauses for Related Thoughts, Ideas, or for Breathing By now you've begun developing a strong intonation, with clear peaks and reduced valleys, so you're ready for the next step. You may find yourself reading the paragraph in...
Exercise 1-29: Making Set Phrases Pause the CD and add a noun to each word as indicated by the picture. Check Answer Key, beginning on page 193. Exercise 1-30: Set Phrase Story The Little Match Girl The following story contains only set phrases, as o...
Two-Word Phrases Descriptive Phrases Nouns are heavier than adjectives; they carry the weight of the new information. An adjective and a noun combination is called a descriptive phrase, and in the absence of contrast or other secondary changes, the s...
Exercise 1-58: Creating Word Groups Break the paragraph into natural word groups. Mark every place where you think a pause is needed with a slash. Pause the CD to do your marking. Exercise 1-59: Practicing Word Groups When I read the paragraph this t...
Exercise 1-57: Phrasing Repeat after me. Dogs eat bones. Dogs eat bones, but cats eat fish, or As we all know, dogs eat bones. Dogs eat bones, kibbles, and meat. Do dogs eat bones? Do dogs eat bones?!! Dogs eat bones, don't they? Dogs eat bones, DON'...
