Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
Region VII, Central Visayas
Division of Bohol

ENGLISH GRADE 7
ACTIVITY SHEET 3.3

Activity Title : Prosodic Features of Speech

Learning Competencies:
1. Use the appropriate prosodic features of speech during
interviews, discussions and forums (EN7OL-III-a-5)
2. Express ideas, opinions, feelings and emotions during
interviews, group/panel discussions, forums/fora, debates, etc;
and (EN7OL-III-a-1.3)
Learning Target : 1. Identify the prosodic features of speech;
Reference : Enriching Oral Communication Skills Book
English Arts I Book

Concept Notes

Prosodic features (sometimes known as suprasegmental phonology) are those

aspects of speech which go beyond phonemes and deal with the auditory qualities
of sound. In spoken communication, we use and interpret these features without
really thinking about them. There are various conventional ways of representing
them in writing, although the nuances are often hard to convey on paper.

Pause. Pause as hesitation is a non-fluency feature. However, intentional pauses

are used to demarcate units of grammatical construction, such as sentences or
clauses. These can be indicated in writing by full stops, colons, semi-colons and
commas.

Pitch. Different pitch levels, or intonation, can affect meaning. The most obvious
example is the way in which speakers raise the pitch at the end of a question, and
this is indicated by a question mark in writing. However, patterns of rise and fall
can indicate such feelings as astonishment, boredom or puzzlement, and these can
be shown in writing only in a special transcription.
A recently-fashionable use of pitch variation is “inlift”, in which the speaker
raises the pitch of the voice in an interrogative way in the middle of a sentence, as
if seeking confirmation of the listener’s comprehension. The popularity of this
speech feature has been attributed to Australian soaps, but it already seems to be
in decline.

Stress. Stress, or emphasis, is easy to use and recognize in spoken language, but
harder to describe. A stressed word or syllable is usually preceded by a very slight
pause, and is spoken at slightly increased volume.
At word level, stress can differentiate between, for example, the
noun ‘desert and the verb des’ert, a distinction which cannot be shown in ordinary
writing: a reader will have to rely on the context to determine which is meant.
At sentence level, which word is stressed can alter the meaning of the sentence.
Consider the sentence I like your red shoes. There is a good deal of difference
between I like your red shoes; I like your red shoes; I like your red shoes; and I
like your red shoes. In writing, this can only be shown typographically, through the
use of italics or underlining. In such cases, a writer will generally italicise the whole
word, even if, in a polysyllabic word, only one syllable actually carries stress.
In any sentence, some words will be stressed more than others: lexical words
(nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are more likely to be carry primary stress
than grammatical words are.

Volume. Apart from the slight increase in loudness to indicate stress, volume is
generally used to show emotions such as fear or anger. In writing, it can be shown
by the use of an exclamation mark, or typographically with capitals or italics (or
both).

Tempo. Tempo, or speed, is to some extent a matter of idiolect. Whilst its use is
not wholly systematic, it can indicate the difference between, for example,
impatience and reflectiveness. It can be shown in writing only through unspoken
words, e.g. “Certainly not”, he snapped.

Task: By pair.
Construct interview questions and interview your partner.
Write a script about the interview conducted.