spoken to their new neighbour or have they just seen him? 8. Will you go boating

or cycling on Saturday? 9. Will you go skiing to the forest next week or will you

stay at home? 10. Is it my fountain-pen or yours? 11. Is it your coffee or mine?

12. Would you like coffee or cocoa for breakfast? 13. Have you had dinner or are

you going to have it? 14. What street do you live in? 15. What exam are you

taking on Friday?

10.

The tines below are taken from books by different authors. How do you think the

authors intended them to be stressed and why?

1. "Do you prefer the inside or the outside, John?" I said I generally preferred

to sleep inside a bed. 2. She said slowly: "If you don't know, nobody does." 3.

"It's all very well for you, fellows," he says, "you like it but I don't." 4. "I had

their promise, their written promise..." 5. M i s s B e e c h . But your mother

likes him? — J o y . (Sullenly). I don't want her to like him. 6. "I say our

chairman. Why do I say our chairman? Because he is not my chairman, you

know." 7. "Speak out," said Martin, "and speak the truth." "I fear this is the

truth." 8. "She'll be pretty," he muttered. "1 shouldn't wonder." "She is pretty,"

said Emily; "she ought to make a good match." 9. George said that if anything

was broken, it was broken, which reflection seemed to comfort him. 10. "Oh!"

exclaimed George, grasping the idea; "but we can't drink the river, you know!"

— "No, but you can drink some of it," replied the old fellow. "It's what I've

drunk for the last fifteen years."

11.Look for similar situations in your books for home reading.

11.This exercise is meant to develop your ability to hear and reproduce intonation in

proper speech situations, a) Listen to the dialogue sentence by sentence. Mark the stresses

and tunes. Practise reading it. (See p. 219) b) Record it. Play the recording back immediately

for your teacher and fellow-students to detect the possible errors, c) Give a conversational

context with the following phrases:

1. Do you think it's ... . 2. Don't speak too soon. 3. Don't worry, (Robert) .... 4.

Never mind. 5. Oh, dear, ....

13.

Make up a conversation with the same phrases.

13. *" This exercise is meant to develop your ability to hear the intonation and to

reproduce it in the text, a) Listen to the text "Seasons and Weather" sentence by sentence.

Mark the stresses and tunes. Practise the text, b) Record your reading. Play the recording

back immediately for your teacher and fellow-students to detect the errors in your

pronunciation, c) Practise the text for test reading:

Seasons and Weather

The year is divided into four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In

spring nature awakens from her long winter sleep. The trees are filled with new

life, the earth is

warmed by the rays of the sun, and the weather gets gradually milder. The

fields and the medows are covered with fresh green grass. The woods and forests

are filled with the songs of the birds. The sky is blue and cloudless. At night,

millions of stars shine in the darkness.

When summer comes the weather gets warmer still and sometimes it's very

hot. It's the farmer's busy season — he works in his fields from morning till

night. The grass must be cut and the hay must be made, while the dry weather

lasts. Sometimes the skies are overcast with heavy clouds. There are storms with

thunder, lightning and hail.

Autumn brings with it the harvest-time, when the crops are gathered in and

the fruit is picked in the orchards. The days get shorter and the nights longer. The

woods turn yellow and brown, leaves begin to fall from the trees, and the ground

is covered with them. The skies are grey, and very often it rains.

When winter comes, we're obliged to spend more time indoors because out-

of-doors it's cold. We may get fog, sleet and frost. Ponds, lakes, rivers and

streams are frozen, and the roads are sometimes covered with slippery ice or

deep snow. The trees are bare. Bitter north winds have stripped them of all their

leaves.

15. This exercise is meant to develop your ability to read and narrate a story with proper

intonation, a) Listen to the joke. Write it down. Mark the stresses and tunes. Practise reading

the joke, b) Listen carefully to the narration of the joke. Observe the peculiarities in

intonation-group division, pitch, stress and tempo. Note the use of temporizers. Retell the

joke according to the model you have listened to.

16. Read the joke silently to make sure you understand each sentence. Find the main

sentence in the text. Underline the main word in every sentence. Split up each sentence into

intonation-groups if necessary. Mark the stresses and tunes. Practise reading the joke several

times. Retell the joke following the model above:

Rather Late

It was a dark night. A man was riding a bicycle without a lamp. He came to a

crossroad and did not know which way to turn. He noticed a pole with sofnething

white which looked like a sign. Climbing to the top of the pole he lit a match and

read: "Wet Paint".

Section Nine

Intonation of Parentheses

Model:Well, 1don't know.What do you think of Nick?> Wel ,| I -> don't know./Wel , |I -*

x

x

don't know. Well, |I don't know.He is a nice chap, I .think.

x

x

x

v

Parentheses express the speaker's attitude towards the utterance.

Parentheses at the Beginning of the Sentence

When the speaker doesn't attach any importance to the parenthetical words at

all they do not form a sepaiate intonation-group and are often unstressed and are

pronounced very quickly.

e. g. -» Well, I xdo. Well, I xdo.

If the speaker attaches more importance to parentheses, they form an

intonation-group. In this case they are stressed and are pronounced with any

nuclear tone: Low Fall, Low Rise, Mid-Level or Fall-Rise.

e. g. xWell, | I vdo.

To -* tell you the , truth, | I Vdon't 'want to go there.

v

> Well, I I vdo.

For my xown ,part, | I should xlove it.

1. a) Listen carefully to the following conversational situations. Concentrate your

EXERCISES

M o d e l 1 : Well yes.'Well yes.

x

x

attention on the intonation of the replies:

By the way, do you play billiards?

I say, what are you and your

sister going to do for your

holiday this year? Oh, Peter's not old enough to

make up his mind about such

things.

I can see the English coast already, can you?

I wish I had your gift for

languages. Yesr what is it now, Harry? The Rovers won, Mum!

And how is your nephew Richard getting on?

And what do you think of London, Mrs. Thompson?

It's my book.

Well, I do, but of course, I'm not a professional or a champion.

Well, I don't know.

Well, you haven't answered my question yet Robert.

Yes, just. Well, I suppose

we'd better get ready for

landing. Well, I don't think I should

call it a gift. Oh, there you are. The Rovers, Robert? Why,

where have you been? Oh, he's getting on quite

well, thank you. Oh, I think it's a wonderful

place. Well take it, then.

b) Listen carefully to the replies and repeat them in the intervals. Have no pause after the