Modification-situational stage

At the modification-situational stage, referred otherwise as practice II, further practice in automation of operations with a new sound is continued at the speech pattern level, i.e. mastering the given speech pattern comprising the phonetic material under study. At this stage the speech pattern is trained initially within a group of phrases, a supra-phrasal unit and then within a text or discourse of a greater length.

One should bear in mind that reproduction at the 2^nd and the 3^rd stages is always preceded by listening to a speech pattern for too hasty giving up the speech pattern listening will negatively influence the quality of the sound reproduced.

While teaching phonetic and intonation material it is important to use audio-visual technical teaching aids which are the means of intensification of the teaching process (tape-recorders, computers, split-screens, TV-sets, video players, etc.). Audio-visual technical teaching aids allow for performing the so-called clue-exercises. Usually they comprise four phases: 1) the sounding sample presented in normal tempo (stimulus); 2) the pause given for the student’s repetition (reaction); 3) the sample represented for the student to be able to match his own pronunciation to that of the speaker (reinforcement); 4) reproduction of the sample by the student (self-correction).

Assimilation of a phonetic structure necessarily includes acquaintance with major rhythmic-intonation patterns. This is put into practice through speech patterns mastering. These patterns are sentence structures or types of sentences. Introduction of a new intonation pattern has to be done in class. One of major tasks at the stage of presentation is imprinting standards of intonation contours in student’s memory. This is done through assimilation of their differential characteristics, which allow for distinguishing these intonation contours from the mother tongue intonation structures or other structures of the target language.

V. Zhigilproposes the following sequence of intonation pattern presentation:

1) explanation of the intonation patterns (with initial presentation of patterns and analysis of their structure);

2) training in recognition of already introduced intonation structures which comprises a) distinction; b) differentiation; c) identification of the patterns in a chain of structures;

3) presentation of intonation patterns (intonemes or rhythmic-melodical contours);

4) reproduction of patterns.

V. Zhigilrecommends distinguishing between the following kinds of exercises in recognition: exercises in distinguishing, in differentiation, in identification.

Training in distinguishing is based on opposition of intonation patterns:

Yes. - Yes. It’s late. – It’s late.

Practice must include distinguishing communicative types of utterances, e.g.: Listen to the following pairs of phrases and say when intonation implies a request: Come here (command or order). Come here (request).

The next step is practice in differentiation. Here intonation patterns are presented in isolation. A student recognises a pattern presented matching its acoustic image to the standard imprinted in his memory (acoustic-articulation stereotypes fund). E.g.: Listen to the following sentence and raise your hand as soon as you hear a sentence pronounced with the rising tone. Then the presentation of intonation patterns follows. The pattern is presented in context. The context, on the one hand, provides understanding an intonation structure and on the other hand, it ensures practice in distinguishing and identification of intonation contours in the flow of speech.

V. Zhigilsuggests that the practice in reproduction should begin with imitation of patterns. The aim of imitation is to create articulation images of intonation structures. The next step is autonomous reproduction of intonemes while reading a text. To make this task easy, students should previously mark stresses, tunes and pauses in the text.

Thus, automation of operating new phonetic material is performed at two levels, or stages: practice I (standardisation-modificatory stage) and practice II (modification-situational stage). While the procedure of automation at the stage of practice I goes through the sound ® word ® phrase treatment, the stage of practice II proceeds with the discourse treatment (supra-phrasal unit ® text).