INTONATION & STRESS

All of you can speak English. But are you sure you have manipulated intonation and stress in your speaking? The following informations will help you to practise speaking skills effectively!

Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes. The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance. Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud. He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening. Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Wait a minute the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence! The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening You are only partially right!

This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English. Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!).

English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words. Let's look at a simple example: the modal verb "can". When we use the positive form of "can" we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced.

They can come on Friday . (stressed words underlined)

On the other hand, when we use the negative form "can't" we tend to stress the fact that it is the negative form by also stressing "can't". They can't come on Friday . As you can see from the above example the sentence, "They can't come on Friday" is longer than "They can come on Friday" because both the modal "can't" and the verb "come" are stressed. So, what does this mean for my speaking skills? Well, first of all, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we do not stress.

Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDSsuch as Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter (most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting Adverbs e.g. often, carefully Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDSsuch as Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few Auxiliary verbs e.g. don't, am, can, were Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as Pronouns e.g. they, she, us Let's return to the beginning example to demonstrate how this affects speech. The beautifu l Mountain appeared transfixe d in the distance . (14 syllables) He can come on Sunday s as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening . (22 syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressedwords in each sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn't worry about pronouncing every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don't). You should however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly. Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn't understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English. I hope this short introduction to the importance of stress in English will help you to improve your understanding and speaking skills.

( From esl.about.com )

PUNCTUATION IS USED TO CREATE SENSE, CLARITY AND STRESS IN SENTENCES

You use punctuation marks to structure and organise your writing. The most common of these are the period (or full stop in British English), the comma, the exclamation mark, the question mark, the colon and semi-colon, the quote, the apostrophe, the hyphen and dash, and parentheses and brackets. Capital letters are also used to help us organise meaning and to structure the sense of our writing.

You can quickly see why punctuation is important if you try and read this sentence which has no punctuation at all:

Perhaps,you dont always need to use commas periods colons etc to make sentences clear when i am in a hurry tired cold lazy or angry i sometimes leave out punctuation marks grammar is stupid i can write without it and dont need it my uncle Harry once said he was not very clever and i never understood a word he wrote to me i think ill learn some punctuation not too much enough to write to Uncle Harry he needs some help.

let's see if punctuation it makes a difference!

Perhaps you don't always need to use commas, periods, colons etc. to make sentences clear. When I am in a hurry, tired, cold, lazy, or angry I sometimes leave out punctuation marks. "Grammar is stupid! I can write without it and don't need it." my uncle Harry once said. He was not very clever and I never understood a word he wrote to me. I think I'll learn some punctuation - not too much, enough to write to Uncle Harry. He needs some help! Use the punctuation section to learn how to make your English clearer and better organised.

( From English4today )

Group work

Entering a university requires us to work in group and study by ourselves. We think they are very useful for any students. Especially, working in group helps us to improve our collaborative skills. Besides, one of your groupmates may have picked up something you missed of vice versa. However, if you only work in the same group for a long time, do you think that is a drawback? First of all, that seems to be good. Because when we collaborate with each other for a long time, we can understand the viewpoints of the partners easily. But when something changes such as members, we can't adapt to new circumstances. Sometimes you can't even understand your partners as well as you can't make yourself understood. Therefore, when you still study in the university, you should practise the way we have just mentioned. That means in each topic, you had better work with diffirent partners. The main purpose of this article is encourage our class to apply this studying method. We hope that all of you will study effectively with it! Please give us some comments on that! Thanks!!!^-^

HELLO EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the first time our group has designed a blog. So, we encounter many difficulties. This photo was taken at our university: HoChiMinh city University of Education. We come from 1C07, department of English.

The first member we want to introduce to you is a Vietnam-born Chinese girl. She is Huỳnh Ái Linh ( in the midle of the photo). Do you think she is pretty nice?(^_^)!!!!hihihi

The first one from right is Phan Trúc Lâm. She comes from Tien Giang province, which has very peaceful rivers . To compare with the others in our group, she has an ideal height (about 1.6m).^^

The one with white glasses is Khuât Kim Ngân. Do you think she looks prettier in glasses? And she is very proud that she was born in Cu Chi, the historical place. She is willing to be a tourist guide for you if you would like to explore Cu Chi Tunnel. @--@hehehe

The last member is Lê Thi Bích Trâm. She comes from Dong Nai province. And she really loves her hometown. It is very beautiful and peaceful. She is very sensible and active. Do you think so?

INTRODUCTION!

I'm Ngan,hi everybody of class 1C07.Welcome to our group's blog.Please comment on our blog