Sound Practice. A. Listen to the following sentences

A. Listen to the following sentences. Define the cases of assimilation affecting the manner of noise production and resulting in the loss of plosion, lateral, nasal and incomplete or fricative plosion. Write the examples into the right column.

a) So the little old woman made the gingerbread man and popped it into the oven to bake.

b) “Stop, stop little man! ”, said the Cow, “You look good to eat”.

d) You can’t catch me!

e) And the Horse could not catch him.

f) The Gingerbread man stopped and so did the Fox.

g) “I want to keep on running. But I can’t cross the river”.

h) It was not long before the sly old Fox reached the other side of the river.

B. Listen to the following passage. Define the consonants or their clusters which never occur word initially. Write down the examples.

Once upon a time there was a little old man and a little old woman. One day the little old woman decided to make a Gingerbread man. She said to her husband, “I shall make his eyes from two currants, his mouth and nose form bits of lemon peel, and his waistcoat from sugar”.

So the little old woman made the gingerbread man and popped it into the oven to bake. Before long it was time for the Gingerbread man to be ready. The little old woman was just bending down to the oven when she heard a tiny voice.

“Let me out. Let me out”.

It was coming from inside the oven. The little old woman opened the oven door and all at once the Gingerbread man jumped out and onto the floor. He straight away ran out of the kitchen door. The Gingerbread man ran off down the road and the little old woman and the little old man ran after him.

C. State the number of monosyllabic, disyllabic and three-syllable words in the passage you have heard in Task B. Group the monosyllabic words according to the following syllable patterns: V, VC, VCC, CVC, CV, CCVC, CVCC, CVCCC. The total number of words is 164.

Intonation practice

A. Listen to the following narrative passage. Write it down. Lay stresses and tone marks. Establish a set of intonational means organising narrative sentences: the use of tones and the rate of their movement direction; rhythmical structure; modifications of pitch, range, loudness and tempo.

So the little old woman made the Gingerbread man and popped it into the oven to bake. Before long it was time for the Gingerbread man to be ready. The little old woman was just bending down to the oven when she heard a tiny voice.

“Let me out. Let me out”.

It was coming from inside the oven. The little old woman opened the oven door and all at once the Gingerbread man jumped out and onto the floor. He straight away ran out of the kitchen door. The Gingerbread man ran off down the road and the little old woman and the little old man ran after him.

B. Listen to the passage in Task A. Define the types of utterance stress used in it. Write them into the right column.

C. Listen to the following sentences. Lay stresses and tone marks. Give their tonograms. Describe the voice quality of the Fox’s speech caused by the modifications of pitch, tempo, loudness, rhythm (smooth / staccato). Define the use of nuclear tones and scales. Do it in writing.

a) A little further on he met a sly old Fox.

“Stop, stop little man! ”, said the Fox, “I want to talk to you”.

b) “Jump onto my tail”, said the sly old Fox, “and I’ll swim across”.

c)...“Gingerbread man, you’re getting too heavy for my tail. You will soon get wet. Climb onto my back instead”.

d)...“Gingerbread man, you’re getting a little heavy for my back. You will soon get wet. Climb onto my nose instead”.

D. Listen to the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Analyse the modifications of its characters’ timbre. Do it in writing. Practise reading the fairy tale imitating the speaker’s intonation. Record your reading.