IELTS Preparation Series 1, Episode 24: Perfect siesta
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Hello, and welcome again to Study English, IELTS Preparation. I'm Margot Politis.
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Today we're going to look at intonation- how we use a rising or falling tone of voice to
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convey meaning - and we'll also have a quick look at how to use commas.
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But first, let's watch a clip about sleep. We'll see a researcher doing some tests on
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a subject, to see just what the benefits are of an afternoon nap.
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Researchers at Flinders University say a short sleep in the mid afternoon could actually
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increase a worker's productivity.
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Each subject performed a series of tests before and after their mid afternoon sleep.
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Some subjective tests of alertness, fatigue, vigour, and also some cognitive performance
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tasks, some which are pencil and paper and some that are done on the computer, and also
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an objective measure of alertness, which is how long it takes someone to fall asleep.
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So if it takes them a long time to fall asleep, that would suggest that they're quite alert,
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and a short time to fall asleep would mean that they're quite sleepy.
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Do you think you were asleep?
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Yes, hard to tell but I think so. I think I did for a bit.
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For how long?
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It felt like probably a couple of minutes, I reckon.
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I want you to do exactly the same thing now. I want you to start here and want you to go
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as quickly and as accurately as you can until I tell you to stop.
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So in that clip we heard a researcher talking to the subject of her tests.
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You'll notice her intonation changed a lot.
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Intonation refers to the changes in pitch in our voice as we speak - whether our voices
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go up, or down.
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Intonation is very important to learn. It has many functions in a language.
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It conveys emotion. We can tell immediately listening to someone how they feel.
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Someone can sound happy, or sound sad.
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Hello, how are you?
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Hello, how are you?
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Intonation also conveys meaning. It let's the listener know whether something is a question
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or a statement, or it can indicate different levels of certainty or uncertainty.
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Hello, are you well?
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Hello, are you well?
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Learning intonation is especially helpful for learning to ask questions, and indicating
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what sort of answer we expect.
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Watch part of the clip again, and listen closely to the intonation as the doctor talks to her
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subject.
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Do you think you were asleep?
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Yes, hard to tell but I think so. I think I did for a bit.
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For how long?
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It felt like a couple of minutes, I reckon.
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The doctor says to the subject, "Do you think you were asleep?"
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Does this have a rising or falling tone?
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Listen again.
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Do you think you were asleep?
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Do you think you were asleep?
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Her voice goes up at the end of the sentence. We call this a rising tone.
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The rising tone is used for yes/no questions - questions that need a yes or no answer.
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Listen now to the second question. Does it have a rising or falling tone?
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For how long?
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It felt like a couple of minutes, I reckon.
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The doctor says, "For how long?"
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This is a question too, but it has a falling tone.
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A falling tone is used with information questions.
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They're questions that need information as an answer, not just a yes or no answer.
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The man answers with a statement: A couple of minutes, I reckon. This takes a falling
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tone.
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In English, statements usually end in a falling tone.
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The falling tone at the end tells the listener that the statement is finished.
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Listen to the intonation used to give instructions.
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I want you to start here and I want you to go as quickly and as accurately as you can
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until I tell you to stop.
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Did you hear the falling tone at the end?
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She said, "until I tell you to stop".
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This tells the listener that this is the end of the instruction.
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So, let's look at when to use rising and falling tones again.
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A rising tone is used at the end of yes/no questions, and a falling tone at the end of
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information questions.
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Falling intonation is also used with statements.
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These are very general rules, but they can help you to work out what you, as a listener,
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are expected to say, and can help you, as a speaker, to convey your meaning.
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Now, let's look at one last example of intonation.
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Listen to what happens when we have a list in a sentence. Here's a very complicated list.
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Some subjective tests of alertness, fatigue, vigour, and also some cognitive performance
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tasks, some which are pencil and paper and some that are done on the computer, and also
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an objective measure of alertness, which is how long it takes someone to fall asleep.
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So she uses a variety of intonation. She uses rising and falling tones, and a tone that's
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neither rising nor falling - just a flat tone, for the items in the list.
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This tells the listener that she hasn't finished her list of tests.
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And then, for the very last item in the list, how long it takes someone to fall asleep,
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she uses falling intonation. This is how we know the list is finished.
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We use generally use falling intonation for the last item in a list.
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So you can see there are some rules for intonation, but of course it varies according to the situation,
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and our attitudes to the topic.
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OK, so when we're talking, we use intonation, pauses and body language to convey meaning.
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But what about when we're writing?
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Well, we need to use punctuation.
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Let's look at one of the most common but difficult punctuation items - the comma.
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Commas are used to help readers understand the exact meaning of a sentence. They're like
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pauses in speech.
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A comma in the wrong place can give the wrong meaning to a sentence.
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For example, look at these two sentences:
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Stop, Jane!
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Stop Jane.
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In the first sentence, the comma shows where there is a pause in speech, "Stop, Jane",
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and this tells us that the speaker wants Jane to stop.
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In the second sentence, there is no pause and no comma - "Stop Jane."
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With no pause, we know that the speaker is telling someone else to stop Jane.
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Let's look at some rules about using the comma.
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First, commas are used to separate items in a list.
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Look at the way commas are used here
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Some subjective tests of alertness, fatigue, vigour,
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and also some cognitive performance tasks.
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OK, so notice that when we write down her speech, we put commas where she uses pauses
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and we use intonation to separate the items in a list.
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We write alertness, fatigue, vigour. We read this as alertness fatigue vigour.
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Adding a comma between items in a list tells us clearly how many different items there
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are.
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A second use of commas is to separate clauses in a sentence.
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We use a comma to separate dependent and independent clauses, but only when the dependent clause
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is first in the sentence.
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This sounds complicated, but it's not really. Here's an example of a dependent clause:
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because he was very tired
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followed by an independent clause:
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he went to bed.
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Notice that we use a comma.
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Because he was very tired, he went to bed.
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But let's swap the clauses around:
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He went to bed because he was very tired.
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In sentences like this, with the independent clauses first, we don't need a comma.
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Listen to the different way they're read out, and you can hear why:
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Because he was very tired, he went to bed. Notice the pause.
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He went to bed because he was very tired. There's no pause.
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So sometimes when you're writing, it helps to think that if there's a pause, you might
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need a comma.
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And that's where we're going to pause today. Hope you enjoyed Study English, I'll see you
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next time. Bye bye.
