Job Discussion Forums

[basiltherat]

does anyone have any ideas to help trainees/students with the ability to use the falling intonation in tag questions ? all the guys are aware of wen and in which situations they should/can use it but theyre having untold difficulties actually doing it. no matter how hard they try, the intonation just keeps rising. ive tried to help them with some ideas to get it to fall .. alas ... to no avail
thnx
basil

[Sheep-Goats]

Here's a full two and half to three hours of stuff you can do. Excerpt appropratly.

If they're having actual problems with producing a falling tone across a few syllables, work on that first. Try the "take what I say and make it sound angry" game.

-------------------------

Draw some cartoons that indicate the difference (rising tone = real information question, falling tone = guess) and project them on the OHP, with speech bubbles coming from the speakers and sentences filled in. Each cartoon should have the same utterance with rising tags on the left and falling on the right, but the actual inflection goes unmarked as it'll be a task. (Ex: You drink whiskey, don't you? (as offer/real question, rising tone); You drink whiskey, don't you? (as guess/accusation, falling tone).) Then go through the questions and get the students to tell you the correct intonations. This is the warm up. Review the tonal meanings briefly.

Then ask the students to:

• [setup] Write one sentence, and add the correct tags to it, twice. So, two copies of the same sentence, which will look identical at the start.
  
• [speaking practice] They pass the paper to a partner. Have them dictate the two to a partner (from memory), who marks rising and falling notations (usually with diacritical arrows).
  
• [reading practice] Give the papers back to the original speaker, who draws a cartoon below (or next to) each utterance (be sure the utterances are spaced out -- you have to set this up at step one). This step can be difficult unless you set up questions that can be accusations ahead of time -- vocab such as drunkards, dating, and problems at work/school works well for this. Again, prime that ahead of time.
  
• [writing practice] The pair looks over eachother's cartoons. Then erases or whites out the utterances and passes the cartoons to another pair. This new pair shows the pictures to eachother and adds sentences, checks these with the original pair to see if they're the same. You can pass the same pictures around the room enlessly at this piont, and because the drawing are often so bad the qustions are often quite funny.
  
• [roleplay/speaking practice] students come to the front of the room and roleplay a cartoon, and the class chorally provides rising or falling tag sentences which one of the people roleplaying would say. This will only work with creative or very well primed classes. Encourage a bit of naugtiness here -- try starting with "You want to kick the teacher, don't you?"
  
• [uptake] Be absolutley sure to remind them explicitly about the tags over the next few weeks, now and then, in activities. Using question tags liberally and appropriatly is probably the most important aspect of genial, native-sounding English.

If you use this activity in a book, please send me a million dollars first. Really.

[Stephen Jones]

Why bother?

Incidentally, to get intonation correct it is easier to back chain. Get them to repeat starting from the end of the sentence.

[Stephen Jones]

[Sheep-Goats]

[Stephen Jones]

Most non-native speakers of English who use question tags do it wrong, and the effect varies from grating to humorous. Same goes for students using "OK" or talking about 'you guys".

You can communicate almost perfectly without question tags, and what most foreign students manage to do is actually communicate worse using them because they are drawing attention to their defective use of the question tag instead of what they want to say.

Now obviously much will depend on the level of the student but students with defective phonology syntax or grammar in other areas of English are not helping themselves by using colloquial English.

[dyak]

[Stephen Jones]

There are plenty of reasons for teaching question tags (grammatical drilling be ong one) and Sheep and Goats' lesson is an excellent one, but attempting to get the students to use them accurately and in the appropriate context, is another matter. They will almost certainly overuse them and use them in the wrong occasion. And it is quite likely they will give quite the wrong impression.

[Teacher in Rome]

One thing you could try is instead of emphasising the rising / falling intonation, focus on the word stress. So for a rising intonation "You like tea, don't you?", tell the students to stress "you" and not "don't". For falling intonation, students stress "don't" rather than "you". It's not foolproof, but it gives the students a break from the frustration caused by vocal gymnastics.

[poro]

[moonraven]

Stephen:

I think this time you deserve a prize!

The prize should be a bronze doorstop with "Reductio ad absurdum" engraved on it,and the following:

"Since it's very difficult for second/third language learners to sound like native speakers, they should not bother trying to learn another language."

That, sir, is the "logic" of your commentary.

[Roger]

I think it is true that non-native speakers of a given language don't exactly ask to be reminded all the time of what they are doing differently when speaking in the target language.

Intonation is a legitimate goal in language instruction, but it involves a higher awareness from the speakers themselves. It is not a do-as-you-are-taught thing but a question of intuition.

I guess your students might be receptive to the idea of listening in on discussions among native and non-native speakers to fine-tune their own handling of English. Whynot tape-record them as they speak?

[Stephen Jones]

[basiltherat]

[moonraven]

Stephen Jones:

You said: "And as the students are never, ever going to get them right, you are simply ensuring that every time they use one, they are reminding everybody that they are not native speakers.
Unless you're training Al-Qaeeda (or Vulcan) operatives to infiltrate Angl-Saxon society, forget about production."

Or was that some other Stephen Jones who wrote that derogatory comment about students?

I think not. You said it, but as usual are too cowardly to accept the consequences of such a belittling statement.