Intonation is important when it is time to communicate in any language. In the English language, your tone of voice helps you express your emotions, attitudes and a clear meaning.
What is intonation?
- Intonation is how native speakers communicate their meaning through their tone of voice.
- Intonation also has a grammatical function, such as signaling the difference between a statement and a question, or distinguishing between an information question or a yes/no question.
Let’s check two patterns in American English:
Rising intonation
It is used when we need clarification or confirmation from the person we’re interacting with. We use rising intonation on yes/no questions. Depending on the context, emotion or attitude you want to express, rising intonation may start earlier in the sentence (2) and then climb all the way to the end (3).
Check that in the following questions, the 2-3 pattern is used. Click on each icon and repeat. Try to follow the same intonation.
Falling intonation
It is used on information questions or "wh-questions”. They follow the 2-3-1 pattern:
In the following questions, check that we start the question in a middle tone (2), then the tone goes higher (3) and finally the tone goes low (1).
In the first example, we are stressing the first syllable of ‘WEEKends’ and then we are dropping down at the end.
Click on each icon and repeat. Try to follow the same intonation.
Click on the following audio icons, listen and identify if they have rising or falling intonation. Then listen again to the questions, repeat and record your voice in your cell phone, compare.
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