Unit 1.4 The sound spine

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Presentation

Audio [03:33]

Quiz

Discussion

1. What did you know about the sound spine before this course?
2. Give examples of when you have tried to communicate in English but ended up with miscommunication.
3. Why do non-native speakers speak English with gaps between words?
4. Do you have word stress and sentence stress in your L1? Is it a stress-timed or syllable-timed language? How similar is it to English in terms of pronunciation?
5. Do you tend to add a lot of ‘um’s and ‘er’s when you speak… a) your L1, b) English? Why do you do that? How can you cut down or stop doing it?

Practice

1. Write five sentences. Mark the stressed syllables in each one. Identify the vowel sound on each stressed syllable. This is the sound spine. Read each sentence emphasising the sound spine.

Further Study

• The Sound Spine