B) Read and act the extract according to the model

This exercise is meant to test your ability to introduce some teaching material in class with correct intonation.

Read the extract from the lecture silently. Intone it Single out the communicative centres. Make them prominent as in the model above. Read and act the extract according to the model:

A: In our first talk we described what I call 'the glide down', a tune in which the first stressed syllable of the sentence is said on a fairly high note. The following stressed syllables are said gradually lower and lower until you come to the last stressed syllable. This syllable starts on a fairly low note and then falls down to the lowest note possible. The whole sentence glides gradually down.

В.: The whole sentence glides gradually down. The whole sentence glides gradually down.

A.: Yes, just like that. But I want to point out to you that in a sentence like this which has five stressed syllables, it's not very easy to make the voice go gradually lower at each stressed syllable.

В.: No. If you're not careful you find that your voice has fallen much too low in the middle of the sentence, when you want to go still lower.

A.: Exactly. But there's remedy for that. Listen again to the same sentence said in a slightly different way.

В.: The whole sentence glides gradually down. The whole sentence glides gradually down.

A.: Did you notice the difference? After the word 'sentence', the voice goes up a little instead of down, as it normally would in a glide down, so that the word 'glides' is on a slightly higher note. Listen again.

В.: The whole sentence glides — sentence glides gradually down.

A: There. Did you hear that? It's just a little trick we have for modifying the glide down in a longer seven stressed syllables. We start off quite normally on a high note, and the second stressed syllable — 'sentence' is on a lower note, just as it is in the ordinary glide down; then the little rise occurs; and after that the tune continues again exactly as before.

В.: There's one point I think we ought to mention, and that is that when the voice rises in the middle of the sentence, it doesn't go up as high as the first stressed syllable.

A.: Oh no, it's only quite a small rise, and you mustn't make it too big, or it will sound wrong. Listen to it just once more.

В.: The whole sentence glides gradually down.

A.: We'll call that tune 'the interrupted glide down' since it is simply a slight variation on our normal glide down; and, by the way, it is used for exactly the same kinds of sentences.

(From " A Course of English Intonation" by J. D. O'Connor)