Intonation practice

Aim : Intonation practice
Time : 10 minutes each.

Procedure : Use this activity to underline the importance of intonation
when your students, as they often do, talk like robots. Basically, get
them to say the words in quotation marks in the contexts that follow.
(Teachers may make the list longer).
1- 'Hello'
to a friend
to a friend you haven't seen for 3 years
to a neighbour that you don't like
to a 6 month old baby
to someone you have just found doing something they shouldn't
to someone on the phone when you're not sure if they are still on the
other end
2- 'Goodbye'
to a member of your family as they are going through the boarding gate
at the airport
to someone who has been annoying you
to a child starting his very first day at school
3- 'How are you?'
to someone you haven't seen for 20 years
to someone who has recently lost a member of the family
to someone who didn't sleep in their own bed last night
4- 'I never go to pubs'
by a person that totally disapproves of drinking alcohol to someone who
often goes to pubs
as a response to someone who has told you they sometimes go to pubs
said before: '…but I quite like discos.'
5- 'What have you done?'
to someone who claims to have fixed your television only that now it's
worse than before
to someone who is scolding you for not doing anything when you suspect
the same about them.
to someone who has just done something very bad and which has serious
consequences
Follow up: The whole class may start a discussion about the extra information
which may be conveyed by the speakers’ intonation, stress, tone, and
rhythm and a revision of some phonetic points may follow.