Exercises aimed at developing and improving pronunciation skill

Exercises aimed at developing and improving pronunciation skills are necessary to back up and increase the level of the already formed pronunciation habits, needed for expressing ideas in oral speech. These exercises are to be performed throughout the whole period of studying. A frequent diet of listening to authentic materials with reproduction and production to follow will effectively serve the purpose of improving pronunciation skills. Most often, such activities will be activities in listening and speaking rather than in reading and speaking. To concentrate the students’ voluntary attention on the sound form of their utterances, it is advisable to include into practice different speech functions. This will make the students purposefully change intonation contours of their utterances in accordance with the given communicative function.

Another way of attracting the students’ attention to the way they sound is simulation, where the role the student performs will have an impact on his pronunciation and intonation.

Assignments for exercises in improving pronunciation skill:

· Listen to the conversation of two friends. Analyse the communicative function of intonation in tag-questions.

(So they are going to marry, aren’t they? – irony)

· I don’t expect you to agree with anything I’ll say. Express your disagreement echoing my words. Mind your intonation.

(There is nothing to fear in the dark. þ Oh, is there?)

· Listen to the phrases expressing sympathy. In two cases the speaker doesn’t sound very sympathetically. Which ones? Practise saying all the phrases as sympathetically as possible.

· Read aloud the following story emphasising the key word of each sentence.

· These phrases can all be used to respond in unexpected situations. Listen and mark them as follows:

ÖÖÖ to show polite acceptance;

ÖÖ to be polite, but to show slight annoyance;

Ö to show the person is annoyed/ does not accept the situation.

· Listen to some polite phrases and say them again showing annoyance.

· Imagine you are a newsreader. Read the story, ensure that it is clear and easy to follow by using the stressed and weak forms correctly.

· Listen to six answerphone messages and report to your friend the one that sounded the most worried to you.

· Listen to someone genuinely interested in astrology. Render his story to your friend showing your personal attitude to what you say (interest, lack of it, irony, disapproval, etc.).