1. This exercise is meant to develop your ability to hear and reproduce the kind of intonation used in a lecture on a scientific subject.
(a) Listen to the following lecture carefully, sentence by sentence. Pay attention to the way intonation helps the lecturer to establish a clear and logical progression of ideas as well as to direct the listeners' attention to the subject matter. Take notice of the fact that the lecturer's speed of utterance is determined by his awareness that his listeners may be taking notes of what he is saying.
"You will all have seen from the handouts which you have in front of you that I propose to divide this course of lectures on the urban and architectural development of London into three main sections, and perhaps I could just point out, right at the beginning, that there will be a good deal of overlap between them. They are intended to stand as separate, self-contained units. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that anyone who tried to deal entirely separately with the past, the present, and the course of development in the future, would be misrepresenting the way in which urban growth takes place.
Now by way of introduction, I'd like to try and give some indication of how London itself originated, of how developmental trends were built into it, as it were, from the very outset; and of how these trends affected its growth. It started, of course, not as one, but as two cities. The Romans built a bridge across the Thames at a point where the estuary was narrow enough to make this a practical proposition, and the encampment associated with this bridge grew up on the north bank of the river. The principal fort of this encampment was on the site now occupied by the Tower. Further to the west, at a point where the river was fordable, an abbee — the Abbee of Westminster — was founded, and the towns grew up side by side — one centred on the Roman camp, and the other on the Abbee.
Now in my next lecture I hope to demonstrate in detail that this state of affairs — this double focus, as we might
call it — was of crucial importance for the subsequent growth of London as a city."
(O. 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 texts 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 scientific style peculiarities as they are displayed in the text.
2. This exercise is meant to develop your ability to introduce teaching material in class with correct intonation.
(a) Read the following extract silently to make sure that you understand each sentence.
"To the question: 'What is language?' many and varied answers have been given. Some linguists, fastening upon the phonetic aspect of speech, have defined language as being basically a series of sounds produced by certain human organs and received by others. Another school replies that since the main characteristic of language is meaning-fulness, and since a transfer of meaning can take place without the medium of sound, as witnessed by semaphoric or gestural systems of communication, the phonetic aspect of language is secondary to the semantic feature. To the grammarian, language is primarily a series of grammatical forms, roots, and endings. To the literary specialist, language is a series of words so arranged as to produce a harmonious or logical effect. To the lexicographer, language is fundamentally a list of words with their separate derivations, histories, and meanings. To the man in the street,
language is what he uses, quite unconsciously, to communicate with his fellow man. Obviously, these partial definitions are all correct. But precisely because they are ALL correct, the sum total of language amounts to something greater than any of them. Sounds in themselves do not constitute language; yet the spoken language consists of sounds. Meaningfulness may be achieved in a number of nonlinguistic ways, therefore meaningfulness alone does not constitute language; yet language, to be worthy of the name, must be meaningful. Grammatical forms and grammatical categories, taken by themselves, axe dead things, as will be attested by many former students who 'went through' Latin and French in certain educational institutions; yet language is characterized by their presence to the extent that there is no language, however primitive, that does not possess some system of grammar. Spoken and written language consists of separate words; but unless these words are arranged in certain sequences, they will not only fail to convey beauty or logic but will even fail to convey complete meaning. Lastly, a language that does not serve as a medium of communication is a traitor to its function."
(M. Pei. "The Story of Language")
(b) Divide the text into paragraphs, if possible. Try to find the main idea in each paragraph. Split up sentences into intonation groups. Single out the communicative centre and the nuclear word of each intonation group. Think of the intonation means they are fo be made prominent with. Mark the stresses ancP tunes. Observe the difference in the duration of pauses between paragraphs, sentences and intonation groups.
(c| Make an oral presentation of this text in class as if you were a university lecturer. Let the teacher and fellow-students listen to you and decide whether your lecture conforms to the required pattern. Introduce alterations in the text, if necessary, and use some hesitation phenomena to obtain a balance between formality and informality. It will enable you to establish a closer contact with the audience. Remember that the success of any kind of lecturing depends on your ability to do so.
3. Find texts dealing with various aspects of general linguistics,
phonetics, grammar, lexicology or literature and prepare
them for oral presentation in class as:
(a) a university lecture; (b) a micro-lesson at an institute; (c) a micro-lesson at school.
Take into account the suggestions given above. Let the teacher and members of the group act as your students or pupils.
4. This exercise is intended to develop your ability to hear and
reproduce the kind of intonation used in reading aloud scien
tific prose.
(a) Listen to the following extract carefully, sentence by sentence.
"In the last chapter it was argued that in order to be fully adequate a theory of style must be capable of application to both literary and non-literary uses of language. It was further maintained that this distinction between uses, even though in no sense an absolute distinction, is not a factitious one; and evidence was adduced to show that it is both real, and moreover, essential to the study of stylistic theory and method.
At this point, it becomes necessary as a preliminary exercise- to review some of the more influential ways in which the term 'style* has been used in the past. This review must be undertaken for two reasons: first, to ensure that the definition of style which it is hoped to arrive at in this book may be seen in a proper relation to other relevant definitions put forward in the past; and second, so that a number of theoretical confusions implicit in seme of those definitions may be identified and cleared from the path of argument.
Style has often been seen as some kind of additive by which a basic content of thought may be modified. Stated in a somewhat different way this view of style sees it as the variable means by which a fixed message may be communicated in a more effective — or, possibly, less effective — manner. The danger of too uncritical an assumption of these and similar notions of style is that they accept as axiomatic the possibility of distinguishing between a thought in some prelinguistic form and the same thought as it issues in words.
That individual writers or speakers may in certain circumstances bv. identified through specimens of their dis-* course has given rise to another highly influential notion of style — as a set of individual characteristics.
Taken to extremes, this view ends up by equating an individual with his style: the style is said to be the man."
(D. Davy. "Advanced English Course")
(Û 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 texts in the same way. Your teacher will help you and all the members of the class tc 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) Make up as full list as possible of scientific style peculiarities as they are displayed in the text. Compare it with the lecture on a scientific subject given above. Identify and account for the differences.
5. This exercise is intended to develop your ability to read aloud scientific prose with correct intonation.
(a) Read the following text silenjly to make sure that you understand each sentence.
"Sociolinguistics studies the ways in which language interacts with society. It is the study of the way in which language's structure changes in response to its different social functions, and the definition of what these functions are. 'Society' here is used in its broadest sense, to cover a spectrum of prenomena to do with race, nationality, more restricted regional, social and political groups, and the interactions of individuals within groups. Different labels have sometimes been applied to various parts of this spectrum. 'Ethnolinguistics' is sometimes distinguished from the rest, referring to the linguistic correlates and problems
32?
of ethnic groups — illustrated at a practical level by the linguistic consequences of immigration; there U a language side to race relations, as anyone working in this field is all too readily aware."
(D. Crystal. "Linguistics")
(b) Split up sentences into intonation groups. Single out the communicative centre and the nuclear word cf 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 sentences and intonation groups.
(c) Read the texts aloud in class. Let the teacher and fellow-students listen to you and decide whether your reading is expressive enough to be easily understood without reference to the printed version.
(d) Make some alterations in the texts, if necessary, and
present them in class as micro-lectures.
6. Find texts dealing with various arts and sciences and prepare them for being read aloud in class. Ask your fellow-students to retell these texts in a manner appropriate for introducing teaching material.