The use of definite phonetic features in the culture of the target language

Sometimes intercultural conversations go very smoothly and are extremely intriguing; think of a walk at sunset on a beautiful beach, for example. At other times, participants unexpectedly run into some turbulence and things don’t go as well as planned. The walk on the beach is interrupted by a violent storm. In intercultural communication, a conversation might be interrupted by a “storm” or a clash. People who live near the ocean can affirm that the scene there never looks exactly the same from day to day. Although there is always water, shore, and sky. The exact color and combinations available each day can change quite noticeably. Intercultural interactions can have the same type of beauty and variation.

The sentence possesses definite phonetic features: variations of pitch or speech melody, pauses, sentence stress, rhythm, tempo and timbre. Each feature performs a definite task and all of them work simultaneously. It is generally acknowledged that the pitch of the voice or speech melody, sentence stress and rhythm are the three main components of intonation; whilst pauses, tempo and timbre play a subordinate role in speech. The pitch of the voice does not stay on the same level while the sentence is pronounced. It falls and rises within the interval between its lower and upper limits. Three pitch levels are generally distinguished: high, medium and low. The pitch of the voice rises and falls on the vowels and voiced consonants. These falls and rises form definite patterns typical of English and are called speech melody. Pitch Range is the interval between two pitch levels. It may be normal, wide and narrow.

E.g. I didn’t know you’ve been to London.

The use of this or that pitch (and range) shows the degree of its semantic importance. As a rule the low pitch level expresses little semantic weight, on the contrary the high pitch level is a sign of importance, stronger degree of feeling.

Rhythm is a regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables at definite intervals.

Melodies, songs, rhymes and poems in the project and later the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages encourage the use of different teaching and learning methods in foreign language learning. One way of doing this is to use melodies, songs, rhymes, poems and games. When the students are in the first and second years, they still like to play and their ability to learn by heart is very good: if you learn something by heart it is your “property” for the rest of your life. Learning new melodies, songs, rhymes, develop several skills that are necessary for the successful learning process of foreign languages such as the ability to concentrate and memorize. The students have to concentrate hard enough to listen to the sounds and words of the songs and rhymes and they have to memorize and repeat first small parts of the words and finally the whole text of the song. Understanding follows either simultaneously or later. Students enjoy melodies, songs and games and, as some of them say, themselves they learn by singing. In the classroom songs also have an influence on the socialization of the group and group dynamics. Students gradually learn the songs by heart and may even feel that “this is our song”. In 2007-2008 they taught Students in the second year group, and one regular activity was to sing and play a song at the end of each lesson. This song was “If” by Rudyard Kipling. Which is internationally known and familiar to some students in its poem version? The students gradually learnt the song and the movements that go with it, and by the time they knew it rather well they did not want to change it, although it had been my intention to do that. Thus for the group the song had become a socially uniting and ritualistic way of ending the weekly English lesson. Rituals and habit give young learners a feeling of continuity and security, and thus helps to provide the structure that young learners need in their daily rhythm. At the same time they are creating their inner structures of time, order and various other features of age-related development. The songs and rhymes used in the foreign language classroom are repeated frequently. It is a general teaching principle that repetition helps young learners to remember the learning material. Gradually start producing the songs and rhymes themselves and thus the learning processes develop from receptive skills to productive skills. Imitation skills are linked to learners’ age. In the early institute years students like to imitate sounds and words and the teacher can use this to build a basis for good pronunciation and intonation. Another argument for using melodies, rhymes is that students learn something about the culture of the target language. One could even say that they learn the real culture. When the teacher chooses to use songs and rhymes which native speaking students learn in their own environment, this teaching material can enable children to interact in some multicultural situations, because these songs and games are widely used in language teaching in different countries. Many young students travel with their families abroad and meet people from different cultures.

A list of used literature

1. Abbott G., McKeating, Greenwood, and P. Wingard. The teaching of English as an international language. A practical guide. — London, 1981
2. Azar B. Sh. Fun with grammar. — New York, 2000
3. Bennett, William Arthur., Aspects of Language and language teaching.- London, New York., Cambridge: University Press, 1968