iatefl_pronsig : Message: Re: [iatefl_pronsig] Re: The Fall-Rise (O'C&A's 'switchback') vs. the 'Divided' Fall-Rise ('high dive

Hi, Alex. Thanks for such a prompt reply.

You may have got the imporession that I use 'Intonation of Colloquial English' at length and almost exclusively, after reading my first message. While the value of O'C & A's description is undeniable, I must confess I only use a digitised version of the tapes for drilling practice of a few patterns (not all!). For the semantics of intonation, and, more particularly, TONE, I follow Brazil's in terms of 'abstract' or 'global' meanings, but Halliday's and Tench's more closely for local meanings. Since I work with EFL teacher trainees, I cannot remain at the global level in terms of tone meanings, and feel that when it comes to dealing actual choices in speech, students require and benefit from more localised explanations. I also make extensive use of a more recent and valuable contribution by Wells which gathers the views of many intonationists, though I feel it focuses on local meanings mostly at the sentence-level, through largely decontextualised examples, or examples that remain at the 'exhange' level, much in O'C & A's tradition, only to 'transfer' uses to conversation-length texts at the very end of the book, when I've noticed over the years that such 'magical' tranfer from isolated examples to contextualised ones is hardly easy and/or feasible. Hewings' is great. I use it (book/cds/cd-rom) for complementing work on TONICITY and TONE (not so much on TONALITY, though, due to the fact that I disgree with several instances of chunking proposed in the relevant units).

Why RP? Well, it's a description I am familiar with, and for which I have plenty of recorded/analysed material. However, RP does not exhaust the range of variation my students are exposed to. I make frequent use of material such as The Nanny and Coupling, and have guest speakers of other varieties of English whenever available. The point is, RP is the springboard for a description of pitch phenomena in English, but the students' repertoire is greatly entriched by exposure to mainstream US and UK 'Englishes'.

Still, even after bringing into my classrooms varied descriptions of English intonation, I feel at a disadvantage when students are at odds trying to figure out the patterns I mentioned, either at the perceptual, explanatory, or productive levels.

Thanks again por such a quick reply. It's good to know there is s.o. out there to interact with. Warm regards,

Jose

--- On Fri, 31/10/08, pronsig_mod <pronsig_mod@...> wrote:

From: pronsig_mod <pronsig_mod@...>
Subject: [iatefl_pronsig] Re: The Fall-Rise (O'C&A's 'switchback') vs. the 'Divided' Fall-Rise ('high dive
To: iatefl_pronsig@...
Date: Friday, 31 October, 2008, 2:31 PM

Hi Jose,

Your difficulty with O'Connor and Arnold's range of intonation patterns is completely
normal. I'm a native British English speaker and I find it very hard to hear or reproduce the
patterns they describe. Their work was impressive and, as one of the few pedagogically-
focussed, comprehensive books on intonation, "Intonation of Colloquial English" still
deserves to be cited. But, I'd say that both in terms of theory and pedagogy there is better
work available now.
In terms of theory, O & A's ideas are fine for a native speaker imagining the sounds in
their head, but when you look at research where real people were recorded, the patterns
are not at all consistent.
In terms of pedagogy, the number of patterns, multiplied by the number of grammatical
contexts that they give, means that there are simply too many elements to the model for it
to be a useful teaching method.
If you want to teach the intonation of fairly formal standard Southern British English, I
would recommend Brazil's Discourse Intonation. It is simpler, and therefore easier to
teach, and works at a discourse level, and therefore fits with more recent theory of
language. Even better, because it includes some more recent aspects of 'spoken' grammar,
is Hewings' "Advanced Pronunciation in Use".
The question I have to ask though is, why are you teaching RP intonation? I think that it is
still useful for some purposes, but many people argue now that teaching RP is not useful
or appropriate. What is the aim of the course? Who are your students? Do they also study
GA, Australian, Indian, Singapore and Lingua Franca intonation?

Alex.

--- In iatefl_pronsig@ yahoogroups. co.uk, "Jose Tiziani" <jmtiziani@. ..> wrote:
>
> I teach RP intonation to teacher trainees in Mendoza, Argentina, and
> have found it difficult sometimes to sort both these patterns out in
> terms of their presentation to the students, the appropriate
> transcription (one tone group or two), the identification in instances
> actual language in use, and the meanings conveyed, especially when it
> comes to distinguishing a fall+rise pattern, each tone with its own
> tone group, from a divided fall-rise in one tone group. Any suggestions
> as to their theoretical status and/or pedagogy?
>

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