Teach English in ShAntang Zhen - Qingyuan Shi

Unit 13: This unit had a lot of complex information. Teaching pronunciation and phonology can be difficult. Phonology includes intonation, stress, rhythm, and use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Intonation helps express emotions or feelings within a message. There are three patterns of intonation. Rise/fall intonation, fall/rise intonation, and level intonation. Using rise/fall intonation you imply you are done speaking and don't expect a response. Using a fall/rise intonation you imply that you aren't done speaking and you're expecting a response. Stressed syllables or words are those that are emphasized to again show an implied meaning. Normally auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns and prepositions are not stressed. Two teaching methods you can use for both intonation and stress are gestures and singing. Sound joining and linked speech is when how we say something differs from how we would write it. In the Phonemic alphabet, characters are used to represent specific sounds. This is helpful with pronunciation because sometimes words don't sound the way they are spelled. It's similar to when children learn to read, sounding out the words. Articulation deals with the way we use our mouths to make sound. the place of articulation is the actual movement of ones' mouth. where as, manner of articulation is the types of different sounds that can be made. Some teaching techniques would be to use my own mouth to model what the mouth should be doing. You can also use mouth diagrams to help reinforce mouth actions. My personal favorite is the use of tongue twisters to help with articulation. This unit was very informative with new information, as well as, reinforcing already acquired knowledge.