The Focus Word

Hello!

Before everyone arrived in class, I polled a few of you to find out how you liked using the pronunciation quizzes in Ellis Intro. Many of you told me you wish you could access Ellis from home. I'm sorry to say that it isn't available via the Internet, but I'm glad so many of you like using it and feel that it's very helpful to you. Some of you chose to use Ellis Intro and some of you chose to stick with Master Pronunciation Course to work on your consonant and vowel sounds. That's fine.

Earlier this week we learned that content words are usually stressed and function words are usually reduced. That is a good foundation for training ourselves in the music of English, but it's not the whole story.

We started the class by talking about the meaning of the words "focus" and "pitch." You gave me lots of good definitions for focus, and Florin made us all laugh when he came up with "I have a Ford Focus." He always comes up with higher level nuances of words for us to learn and think about. Bashar gave us a good definition for pitch. It's how your voice goes higher and lower while you're talking. It's different from volume, which means how loud your voice is. A change in volume is also part of the music of English, though.

Today we learned that every clause or sentence has one word that receives the biggest focus. (In the case of choices, there can be two words that share the main focus.) That means we stress them the most. We repeated some sentences; you told me which word in each sentence sounded most stressed. There was a pattern. When you only have one sentence, or when you are beginning a conversation, the last content word is the main focus word.

Examples: The car hit a pedestrian. My dog likes water. What are you doing?

We practiced the intonation of some more sentences by humming them. Then we practiced them orally, making sure to make our stressed vowels longer and clearer.

Then we looked at a dialogue between two people. We saw that after the first sentence, the focus word is no longer always the last content word in the clause or sentence. The focus shifts! What is the rule governing how the focus shifts? We discovered one situation where focus shifts: the introduction of NEW INFORMATION.

Example:

A: What do you want to do after class?

B: Let's go to the AGW.

A: I've already seen the AGW.

B: [etc.]

In line two, AGW is the new information. But in line three, AGW is old news. Now seen is the new information.

With this new rule under our belts, we worked in pairs to identify the focus words in a series of short dialogues. We took each one up and then practiced them with our partners. We took turns performing them for the class, too.

Ghadeer said today's lesson was too easy. Well, don't worry. We are building a firm foundation for mastery over the music of English. If you can do this, you are well on your way to sounding very natural in English.

Have a good weekend, and I'll see you Monday.