Listening to Spoken English

Abstract

Part 1 The need to teach the comprehension of spoken English: slow colloquial and normal speech testing or teaching comprehension? the nature of comprehension the processes of comprehension the accent of English described in this book. Part 2 Ideal segments, syllables and words: the phoneme the consonants of English place of articulation voicing and voicelessness the vowels of English the transcription of vowels the ideal syllable and the ideal word. Part 3 The function of rhythm: the rhythmic structure of English stressed and unstressed syllables pause - rests in rhythm the function of stress word stress stressed words in sentences. Part 4 Patterns of simplification in informal speech: adjustment to surroundings elision word boundary markers consonants and vowels in the stream of speech reduction in visual cues. Part 5 The function of intonation: the ideal organisation of tone groups the ideal placing of the tonic tone group and tonic in spontaneous speech pitch direction. Part 6 Paralinguistic features: pitch span placing in the voice range direction of pitch tempo loudness voice setting articulatory setting articulatory precision timing of segments and syllables lip setting pause constructing a framework using the paralinguistic features. Part 7 Teaching, listening, comprehension: identifying the problem recognising the code processing the complete text purposeful listening the social context of listening combining the approaches bottom up processing - the phonological code topdown processing - using the context to make predictions making inferences methodology using the phonological cues learning to use contextual information drawing constrained inferences.