SUMMARY OF TEACHING APPLICATIONS

 

◈ SUMMARY OF TEACHING APPLICATIONS

 

■ In many language class where oral skills are taught, the interaction of discourse and prosody must be highlighted and taught since contextually appropriate control of rhythm and intonation are an essential part of oral communicative competence.

 

 

1. direct students' attention to a few major patterns.

2. alert students to differences between the punctuation system and the intonation system.

3. distinguish betwwen isolated sentences, which generally can take several intonation contours, and the intonation of ongoing discourse, in which case only one intonation contour is generally appropriate.

4. teach students skills so they can make reasonable guesses about the speaker's intention in any given speech situation, based on the speaker's stress and intonation.

 

 

■ When practicing dialogs, reading discourse excerpts, and doing more realistic role plays and speech act simulations, the teacher must be sure to spend time on practicing rhythm and intonation and allowing the learners the opportunity both to observe and monitor their performance with respect to prosody and to receive feedback on repeated performances in order to improve their speech production.