1. This exercise is meant to develop your ability to hear and reproduce the kind of intonation used in informational style (news coverage).
(a) Listen to the following broadcast news item carefully, sen
tence by sentence.
"Thirty-five vehicles were involved in a multiple collision on the M. 1 motorway this morning. The accident occurred about three miles south of the Newport Pagnell service area when an articulated lorry carrying a load of steel bars jack-knifed and overturned. A number of lorry drivers and motorists were unable to pull up in time and ran into the overturned vehicle, causing a major pile up. Some of the steel bars from the load were flung by the impact across the central reserve into the southbound carriageway, which was restricted to single-lane working because of repairs and resurfacing, causing several minor accidents. With both carriageways blocked, police closed the motorway for a time, and diversion signs were posted at the nearest slip roads. Breakdown vehicles and ambulances had considerable difficulty in reaching the scene of the accident because of fog. This was dense in places, and the flashing amber light signals had been switched on for most of the night. So far there are no reports of anyone seriously injured in the accident."
(D. Davy. "Advanced English Course")
(b) Mark internal boundaries (pausation). Underline the communicative centre and the nuclear word of each intonation group. Mark the stresses and tunes. It is not expected that each student will intone the text in the same way. Your teacher will help you and all the members of the class to correct your variant. Make a careful note of your errors and work to avoid them.
(c) Practise reading each sentence of. your corrected variant after the tape-recorder.
(d) Record your reading. Play the recording back immediately for your teacher and fellow-students to detect your errors.
(e) Listen to your fellow-student reading the text, tell him what his errors in pronunciation are.
(f) Identify and make as full list as possible of informational style peculiarities as they are displayed in the text.
2. This exercise is intended to develop your ability to read aloud texts belonging to informational style.
(a) Read the following text silently to make sure that you un
derstand each sentence.
"Eighteen workers who have been locked out of a Brighton textile factory because they joined a union, are to seek the support of the trade union group of Labour MPs next Tuesday. The meeting with the executive of the group of the House of Commons has already been arranged. Last week-end more than 200 Sussex University students attended a special meeting of the University Union and passed unanimously a resolution supporting the dismissed workers. Their resolution, copies of which were sent to the Prime Minister and Minister of Labour, 'expressing union disgust at the dismissal of the 18 workers and the scandalously low rate of pay.' It calls on the management to reinstate tile locked-out workers and recognize the employees' right to organize themselves into a branch of the National Union."
(A News Bulletin Item)
(b) Divide the text into paragraphs, if possible. Try to find the main idea in each paragraph. Split up sentences into intonation groups. Find the communicative centre and the nuclear word of each intonation group. Think of the intonation means they are to be made prominent with. Mark the stresses and tunes. Observe the difference in the duration of pauses between paragraphs, sentences and intonation groups.
(c) Read the text aloud as if you were a radio announcer. Let the teacher and fellow-students listen to you and decide whether your reading conforms to the required pattern. Try to keep the listeners' interest but do not allow personal attitude to be introduced. Bear in mind the absence of visual contact between the radio announcer and his listeners.
Find some newspaper material and prepare it for oral presentation in class as broadcast news. Make some alterations in the texts to ensure that the material can be easily articulated and understood. Avoid anything which would disturb over-all fluency, eg sentence structures that could be read in any of a number of ways, tongue-twisters, etc.