Analyze2Imitate
Pausing, Phrase Stress, and Intonation
Pausing, Phrase Stress, and Intonation
Select a short TED talk or podcast from Scientific American's "Science, Quickly" that you find interesting.
Under the TED talk video, click the "Read Transcript" button so you can copy and paste into a Microsoft Word or other document the part of the transcript text you find interesting.
Watch the TED talk at least twice, inserting "/" where the speaker makes a short pause and inserting "//" where the speaker makes a long pause. (Use pencil if you do this with a printed transcript, so you can easily fix mistakes!)
When you see / a diagram like this, / I don't want you to be afraid. I want you to be excited. I want you to be relieved. / Because simple answers may emerge. / We're discovering in nature that / simplicity often lies on the other side of complexity. So for any problem, the more you can zoom out / and embrace complexity, the better chance you have / of zooming in / on the simple details / that matter most. (Eric Berlow: "Simplifying Complexity," TED)
Highlight the last "important word" in each thought group (usually a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb), since this is the default position of phrase stress in English.
Listen to the talk one more time to check whether the speaker actually stresses in each thought group the word(s) you highlighted. Change your highlighting as necessary to match the speaker's actual phrase stress. (FYI: English speakers add phrase stress to a word by lengthening whichever vowel in that word receives the word stress.)
If the speaker stresses a word in order to contrast it with another word, highlight in a different color the specific syllable they actually stress (It's important to highlight the exact syllable the speaker stresses and not just the word since contrast stress can change not only which word is stressed, but also which syllable in that word is stressed.) For example, Eric Berlow in his TED talk, "Simplifying Complexity," consistently shifts his word stress for the word "complicated" to contrast it with the word "complex":
"So / I hope to convince you that complex / doesn't always equal complicated. // So for me / a well-crafted baguette, fresh out of the oven, / is complex, / but a / curry / onion / green olive / poppy cheese bread is complicated" (Eric Berlow: "Simplifying Complexity," TED)
Read the transcript again, underlining each thought group you think the speaker will mark with a rising intonation (vs. the default falling intonation of English or the fall-rise or rise-fall intonation very occasionally used)
Listen again to the talk to check/correct your predictions.
"I also figured out / that / if you really want something badly enough, / you can do anything for 30 days. // Have you ever wanted to write a novel? // Every November, / tens of thousands of people/ try to write their own 50,000-word novel,/ from scratch,/ in 30 days. // It turns out, / all you have to do / is write 1,667 words a day / for a month. // So I did. // By the way, the secret / is not to go to sleep / until you've written your words for the day. // You might be sleep-deprived, / but / you'll finish your novel. // Now / is my book / the next great American novel? // No. I wrote it in a month. / It's awful. / But / for the rest of my life, / if I meet John Hodgman at a TED party, / I don't have to say, / 'I'm a / computer scientist.' / No, no, / if I want to, I can say, / 'I'm a novelist.'" (Matt Cutts: "Try something new for 30 days," TED)
Record yourself giving the talk (perhaps using a tool like the Online Voice Recorder from VirtualSpeech). Pay attention to pausing only where you marked either "/" or "//", to lengthening the stressed vowels in each of your highlighted words, and to using rising intonation for every thought group you underlined.
Check your recording. Did you pause only where you marked "/" or "//"? Did you lengthen the stressed vowels of all your highlighted words? Did you use rising intonation for all of your underlined thought groups? Mark in bold any thought group in which you made a pausing, phrase stress, or intonation mistake.
Rerecord the talk, paying particular attention to the stress and intonation of the words and phrases you marked bold.