Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

[Włodzimierz Sobkowiak]

Tonight we did one more activity, a match'm'all, with 4-syllable words (see below for player 1 notecard) and the finder game with 5-syllable words. The former turned out to be quite difficult and took quite some time. The latter was rather easy, even for newcomers, although some words present difficulties in terms of stress placement, for example "laboratory", oOooo in British English, but OooOo in American English :-(. Anyways, the finder game is there, if you want to try it. I will also shortly change the walk-through grid to contain some stress-relevant content.

You suggestions are welcome for more stress-related themes and activities. One student suggested sentence stress and intonation, for example. There's a lot of interest beyond word-stress, of course... What do you think?

As a side note: Abraxas asked me about "spooky silence" in our SL meetings... I'm happy to say there's much less of it than there used to be... Maybe we could reduce it even further, and have a real ... hullabaloo of a conversation (ooOo :-).


Match them all! (word-stress game; 4 syllables) - player 1
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(C) Wlodek Barbosa

In this game you'll practice stress patterns of some 4-syllable words in English; only words with primary stress are used here, no compounds. With one stress and four syllables, there are logically four combinations of stressed/unstressed syllables: Oooo, oOoo, ooOo and oooO. There are altogether 36 common words. Each player gets a notecard with one of the four stress patterns and words with the remaining three patterns listed alphabetically, but without their stress patterns. S/he must collect from the other players the words to match his/her unique stress pattern. At the bottom of each notecard all words are properly categorized (so do not look there before you finish!). Good luck!

Stress pattern for player 1 (10 words)
---------------------------------
Oooo

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.


Words for player 1
-----------------------
ability
altogether
aluminium
available
catamaran
community
conversation
diameter
entrepreneur
equivalent
expedition
experiment
hullabaloo
identify
independent
individual
manufacture
mathematics
misunderstand
overreact
particular
revolution
situation
society
superintend
variety
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
36 4-syllable words, categorized according to their stress pattern
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oooO
-------
catamaran
entrepreneur
hullabaloo
misunderstand
overreact
superintend

ooOo
-------
altogether
aluminium
conversation
expedition
independent
individual
manufacture
mathematics
revolution
situation

oOoo
-------
ability
available
community
diameter
equivalent
experiment
identify
particular
society
variety

Oooo
-------
agriculture
automobile
caterpillar
dictionary
military
necessary
ordinary
secretary
television
territory

[Abraxas]

Hi,
I really like the idea to go ahead with the stress and intonation of sentences. That knowledge is very helpful in real world and even in conversations, in which you see no facial expressions from the conversation partners it is extremely important, in my opinion.
So heading forward and go along with less spooky sessions. ;)