UNIDAD I

LISTENING

The listening process and the different listening situations

The native and the foreign listener.
An overview of linguistic, paralinguistic and extra linguistic signals.
Top-down and Bottom up approaches
 Bottom up processing: the phonological code
The problem for foreign learner is that so much disappears in the stream of normal
speech that it is not clear how many words there are supposed to be in the utterance and
where the boundaries might lie. It is essential in English to learn to pay attention to the
stressed syllable of a word, since this is the best and most stable feature of the word’s
profile, and those words in the stream which are stressed, since these mark the richest
information. We should also pay attention to the gestural and paralinguistic embedding of
speech.

 Top down processing: using the context to make predictions

If we examine conversations between people we find that they constantly repeat
expressions which have been used by the other speaker. In many everyday situations,
even if you do not hear everything the other person says, you can have a good idea of the
sort of thing that will have been said, which you construct partly from the phonetic cues
that you hear, and partly from the knowledge of what you would have said if you had
been speaking, or perhaps from your stereotypic knowledge of what that sort of speaker is
likely to say in such situation. This familiar knowledge, which has many different
appellations with different shades of meaning in the literature (background knowledge,
mutual knowledge, shared knowledge) derives from a range of experience which relates at
least to the following features:

1. The speaker: (male, female, age, level of education, English accent)

 The role the speaker adopts in speaking (Prime Minister, mother, teacher, friend)
 The attitude of the speaker towards the listener (friendly, condescending,
sympathetic)
 The attitude of the speaker towards the topic (interested, bored, angry, excited)
2. The listener: who is being addressed? In what role? (pupil, child, officer)
3. The physical context: (place and time) where is it? (bus, radio station, Law corts) what
time? (New year, winter, late evening)
4. Genre: What sort of speaking is going on? (public lecture, public reading, an interview)
5. Topic: what is being talked about (the state of economy, a football match result, race
relations)
The competent listener
 A competent listener is able to listen predictively and critically, watching out for new
information which fits neatly into already existing conceptual structures and reacting
sharply, and indeed often accusingly, when confronted with information which does not fit
into the preconceived framework. From time to time the students can be challenged to
cope with some information which does not fit neatly into their established scheme of
things. This can be a hard exercise in foreign language but it is important that students
begin to experience language which does not simply restate what they already know or
could have guessed.

Strategies for successful comprehension.

Patterns of simplification in informal speech.
Detection and analysis of the different processes.
What to listen for.
Types of listening: academic listening and note taking.

UNIDAD II
PROSODIC FEATURES: INTONATION

Definition

 Intonation refers to the rise and fall of the pitch of the voice in spoken language. It is now
what we say, but the way we say it. ‘The way we say it’ is a rough guide to what intonation
is. Intonation is inevitable whenever a language is spoken because we eventually realize
that it carries meaning and will often be the most important part of a message for it links
not only with meaning, but also with grammar, pronunciation and spoken discourse at
large. A firmer definition is that intonation is the linguistic use of pitch in utterances.

The phonological units

The structure of intonation

 There is hierarchy of phonological structures and units. It can be described in the following
way: and intonation unit has a structure of one or more rhytmitic units, of feet; each foot
has a structure of syllables; and each syllable has a structure of phonemes. Thus, there are
four ranks of phonological structure: at the lowest level, phonemes, then syllables, feet
and intonation units (Halliday) Out of all parts of the structure of an intonation unit, the
tonic (or nucleus) is obligatory; without it we cannot identify a complete unit. The head,
pre-head and tail are optional in the sense that they may or may not be present.
The systems of intonation.

The functions of intonation

 System and structure relate to the nature of intonation: what intonation is like. We now
turn to what intonation does: its functions.

1. The organization of information

It involves decisions about the division of information into manageable pieces (what comes
first, what follows, what precedes) It also involves grading the pieces of information into major
and minor and trying them up into coherent sequences. This division is handled by tonality
and the grading is handled by tone (rises, fall, fall-rises)

2. The realization of communicative functions

Its function is to present the speaker’s purpose in saying something; whether the speaker is
telling you something, asking you, ordering you, pleading with you, or just plainly greeting you
or thanking you, etc. It is the intended effect that the speaker wishes to produce on those who
are being addressed. Realization of communicative functions answer the question ‘why is it
being said’?

3. The expression of attitude

The way something is said usually refers to the mood of the speaker or the attitude shown to
the addressee or the message. A message, a piece of information, can be given politely,
grumpily, angrily, warmly and even neutral. This function answers the question ‘how is it being
said?’

4. Syntactic structure

In English, there are many cases where two syntactic patterns can only be distinguished by
intonation. The most common example is the distinction between defining and non-defining
relative clauses.

5. Textual structure

To illustrate how intonation performs this function, think first of all of how you know when
one item of news has finished and a new one begins, in newsreading. No one tells you but you
know. A new item usually starts on a fairly high pitch. When that item comes to and end, the
general pitch level of its final intonation unit is relatively low. A noticeable pause signals the
end of that item. Then comes the next item. This phenomenom has been called phonological
paragraphing. It should not come as too much of a surprise that there is an equivalent
paragraph in spoken discourse to that found in the written mode.

6. The identification of speech styles

 We probably differentiate dozens of different styles simply on the basis of the general sound.
The general sound of a partitular language event is known as its prosodic features: degree of
formality, number of participants, degree of privacy, degree of semantic preparation, and
whether the spoken discourse was scripted or not. These features register in intonation,
loudness, tempo, rhythmicality, paralinguistic features and hesitation pauses. As far as
intonation is concerned, styles vary in the proportions of falls and rises, relative length of
intonation units and degree of textual structure (phonological, paragraphing)

Genres in spoken language (Speech styles).

The role of intonation in the comprehension of different speech styles.