Back to School - Using Prosody When Speaking to New Listeners
Tips for practicing prosody
Prosody is the Music of a Language
“Prosody” can be broken down into its parts: intonation (the change in pitch across the sentence), pace, volume, timing, and the overall rhythm of a language.
A benefit of using prosody to emphasize the important words and make them stand out to listeners is that it helps listeners follow your meaning more easily. This is helpful for any situation where you are explaining concepts and processes to a group of listeners, whether you’re a teacher giving a lecture, a student giving a presentation, or at work speaking in a meeting. It helps to break down long sentences into smaller groups, know which words you should emphasize, and practice by imitating other speakers.
Help People Hear What You Mean
First, don’t think in terms of sentences. Think in terms of “thought groups” which are any group of words that express a part of your overall meaning. Divide long stretches of speech into smaller thought groups by using either tiny pauses or by changing the pitch. Go down in pitch at the end of the complete idea to make the information easier to understand by the listener. It is much easier for the brain to take in small groups of meaning because it doesn’t have to hold so much information in short term memory.
Example:
Divide long stretches of speech / into smaller thought groups / by using either tiny pauses / or by changing the pitch./ Go down in pitch / at the end of the complete idea / to make the information easier to understand / by the listener.
Emphasizing important words in thought groups with higher pitch and stretching the vowels longer in the stressed syllables of those words makes the words easier to notice. Those are the words that will stand out to the listener to create more meaning than the less important words. Listeners now have a better chance of noticing and remembering the important words long enough to write/type them in their notes. In the example below, the bold words are emphasized.
Example:
Divide long stretches of speech / into smaller thought groups / by using either tiny pauses / or by changing the pitch. / Go down in pitch / at the end of the complete idea / to make the information easier to understand / by the listener.
How do I know which words to emphasize?
There are words that have a higher probability of being emphasized than others. These are:
Any new information being introduced.
Contrasting ideas.
Question words (e.g., who, what, why, when, where, how)
Negative words (e.g., can’t, won’t, never)
Adverbs (e.g., really, very, just, always)
Adjectives (e.g., wonderful, small, blue)
As the speaker, you have to trust that you know what is important and what you want the listeners to understand. That’s how you’ll know which words to emphasize.
Help Listeners Follow Your Ideas
There are times you want to emphasize words to help your listeners understand the relationship between the concepts you are talking about, the sequence of ideas or steps, or how the information relates to the listener. Some of the examples below are teaching related, but can be used in any situation.
Emphasize transitions between concepts or topics and use transitions that show the relationship:
“..that brings us to the impact this finding had on…” and “Now that we know the basic elements, we can combine them…”
Emphasize lists and begin with a heading:
“There are three main reasons why…First, the conditions….”
Emphasize where the new information is coming from:
“In this week’s supplemental reading material, the idea of “linking” was described in detail.”
Emphasize information you’re repeating from previous classes and where it came from:
“As we discussed last week in the ‘Basics’ chapter…”
Emphasize the question after you’ve answered it:
“Why was this an important development?”….”This was an important development because it….”
Practice Prosody
The three stages of progress that everyone goes through when learning a new speaking skill are:
Awareness - Can you hear this thing?
Control - Can you make your voice do that thing?
Analysis - Can you tell if you successfully said the thing?
Sign up to receive an email a day for 30 days
I created the “30 Days of Prosody” to help people increase their awareness, control, and analysis. I’ve chosen 30 video or audio examples and introduce each one with a description of why I chose it. The transcript is provided.
After 30 days, you’ll hear the world around you in a different way. You’ll be much more aware of how people use prosody and gain more control over how you want to sound.
Join the American English Intonation Meetup group
This group meets every Wednesday at 6:00pm US Eastern time. We practice any phrase, greeting, expression, sentence, or question that people request. I look for which words to emphasize and any connections that are possible between the words.
Watch the post-Meetup videos on YouTube
After each Meetup, I record myself saying the sentences we practiced together and post them on YouTube, so if you can’t make the live meeting, you can watch the videos.
Try the online course I made, “Introduction to Pitch and Intonation” parts 1 and 2.
There are many audio and video examples of changes in pitch starting with single syllable words like “yes” and increasing up to imitation of a speech in a movie (yes, it’s from “Legally Blonde” :-).
I hope this gives you some good ideas of how to practice prosody. If you have a suggestion of what works well for you, please let me know!