Tuesday, October 5, 2010

More Tag Questions and Canadian "eh"

Hello!

Today we had more practice with tag questions. I hope you feel less confused and more confident about using tag questions with rising and falling intonation.

First we went over the explanation of what a tag question is. Then we practiced saying them with falling intonation and with rising intonation. We again explored some contexts in which each would be used. Some of you are really getting the hang of it now. Federico said that rising is easy for him, but the falling one is hard. Just remember that for the falling one, your intonation is pretty level throughout the statement, then you raise your intonation on the auxiliary verb and fall again on the pronoun.

We got out our bouncy ball and did a chain drill to practice tag questions some more.

Next I told you a little bit about the Canadian "eh." We talked about the fact that it is a stereotypical feature of Canadian English, which made you all ask me what "stereotype" means. We will explore that more tomorrow during conversation day!

I told you about three uses for "eh." It is like a little tag question that means, "right?" or "okay?"

The narrative "eh" means "are you listening?" People sprinkle that one through a story they are telling. "Eh" can also be informative. "It's cold out, eh? You should put on a coat."

We looked at some examples. We did not practice that because you don't need to use "eh." You just need to know about it in case you hear a Canadian use it with you.

Here is a link to a YouTube video where you can hear someone using "eh."


For our last 15 minutes, we pretended to go shopping in pairs. Each pair had a clothing or furniture catalog. We practiced saying things like, "Those are pretty curtains, aren't they?" and "That's a good price, isn't it?"

Tomorrow is conversation day. See you there!

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