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Prosody Course Syllabus


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pronunciation vs prosody



Speak English with confidence and clarity!

Do you know how to stress words and phrases in English? Shadowing native speakers' speech is not enough to learn this skill, because the same sentence can be stressed in different ways to convey different meanings. To shadow effectively, you first need to understand the different types of stress in English, which in linguistics is called prosody. You may have learned about word stress and compound word stress, but English also has higher-level stresses, such as sentence stress and focus word stress. These higher-level stresses provide rhythm and melody to English speech. Without understanding these different types of stress and their intended meanings, shadowing is just parroting and you will likely be misunderstood. To be able to speak English that is easy on the ear because it is close to the native tune, you must study English prosody.

This course will teach you everything you need to know about English prosody, including word stress, compound word stress, sentence stress, and focus words stress. You'll also learn how to use these different types of stress to convey different meanings, such as literal meanings, emotional meanings, attitudinal meanings, and contextual meanings.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to speak English with confidence and clarity, and you'll be able to communicate your ideas more effectively.

Take a look at our sample lectures by clicking the links below and see for yourself why our course is the best way to learn English.


Prosody course syllabus

File name

Title 

Length (min:sec)

r0-1

English as a stressed-timed and intonational language

12:14

r0-2

Prosodic hierarchy of English

12:12

r0-3

Organization of the book

7:29

r1-1

Part I: Word stress

8:49

r1-2

Single vowel sound

10:48

r1-3

Consonant clusters

9:43

r1-4

Affixes and compounds

8:26

r1-5

Consonants between vowels

8:37

r1-6

Stressed syllables

6:48

r1-7

Two-syllable words

10:55

r1-8

Words with more-than-three syllables

5:47

r1-9

Stress shift due to affixes

9:39

r1-10

Stress carrying suffixes

11:48

r1-11

Stress shift in words

12:24

r2-1

Part II: Compound word stress

10:08

r2-2

Double-stressed phrasal verbs

10:35

r2-3

Noun expressions

10:24

r2-4

Compound nouns

14:13

r2-5

Compound adjectives

18:17

r3-1

Part III: Rhythmic stress

7:42

r3-2

Sentence stress

10:45

r3-3

Unstressed content words

7:47

r3-4

Rhythm unit

8:54

r3-5

Isochrony

12:14

r3-6

Manners of regulating rhythm

9:21

r3-7

Vowel reduction

10:38

r3-8

Phoneme dropping in function words

9:12

r4-1

Part IV: Focus word stress

9:57

r4-2

Thought group

10:08

r4-3

Pause necessary

9:28

r4-4

Restrictive vs nonrestrictive modifiers

7:09

r4-5

Focus word and meaning

8:31

r4-6

Default place for focus words

8:47

r4-7

Non-default focus words

10:22

r4-8

For contrast

14:43

r4-9

Pitch contour

15:13

r5-1

Part V: Sentence Intonation

9:59

r5-2

Strong intonation needed

8:25

r5-3

Intonation patterns

11:50

r5-4

Falling intonation

9:19

r5-5

Rising intonation

7:11

r5-6

Four pitch levels

7:54

r5-7

Degrees of rise

10:11

r5-8

Degrees of fall

11:26

r5-9

American vs British intonation

4:56

r5-10

Intonation and its function

10:38

r5-11

Context function

9:00


Total narration time

7 hours 50 minutes


Detailed Prosody Course Syllabus

Introduction to Prosody

English as a stressed-timed and intonational language

Prosodic hierarchy of English

Word stress

Syllable counting

Syllable based on the single vowel sound

Caution: adjacent vowel letters

Caution: affixes and compounds

Long vs short vowels

Syllabic consonants

Stressed syllables

Monosyllabic word stress

Two-syllable word stress

Three-syllable word stress

More-than-three syllable word stress

Stress shift due to affixes

Stress-neutral suffixes

Stress-shifting suffixes

Stress carrying suffixes

Stress with prefixes

Stress shift in words

Literal vs derived meaning

Different parts of speech

 

Compound word stress

Phrasal verb stress

Single-stressed phrasal verbs

Double-stressed phrasal verbs

Separable phrasal verb stress

Rhythmic stress shift

Three-part phrasal verb stress

Compound noun stress

Descriptive noun phrase stress

Stress based on the components of compound nouns

Compound vs descriptive noun phrases

Compound adjectives

Stress with hyphenated compound adjectives

Stress based on the components of compound adjectives

Stress of more than two word compound adjectives

Rhythmic stress shift

 

Sentence stress

Stress-timed vs syllable -timed language

Sentence stress

Content words vs function words

Priority of nouns

Unstressed content words

Stressed function words

Rhythm unit

The poetic foot

Isochrony

Grouping into rhythm units

Manners of creating rhythm

Rhythmic stress deletion

Rhythmic stress shift

Rhythmic vowel clipping

Vowel reduction

Syllable elision

Phoneme dropping in function words

Syllabic consonants

Contractions

 

Focus word stress

Thought group (intonation unit)

Pausing and change of meaning

Thought grouping

Pausing necessary

Restrictive vs nonrestrictive modifiers

Focus word

Focus word and change of meanings

Default place for focus word

Default focus words

Reasons for non-default focus words

Pitch contour

Nuclear syllable of focus word and tonic stress

Pitch contour

Elements of thought group: pre-head, head and tail

 

Intonation

Intonation vs tone language

Sentence intonation patterns 

Terminal tone

Combining intonation units

Falling intonation

Rising intonation

Four pitch levels

Beginning pitch level

Sarcasm

Yes-no question

Rhetorical questions

Mid fall

Conversational implicatures

Steep fall

Parenthetical remarks

American vs British intonation

Intonation and its function

Grammar function

Attitude function

Context function

New vs old information

High vs low content