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Advanced Pronunciation: Thought Groups
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Part One
Listening for Thought Groups
Introduction to Thought Groups
Content and Function Words
What are thought groups?
Thought groups determine when English speakers pause between groups of words and sentences.
Why are you interested in working for us? What attracted you to our company?
Why do we use thought groups?
Content Words
What do you think is your greatest asset that you can contribute to our team?
Function Words
Native English speakers do not speak English continuously. They take tiny pauses in between groups of words and sentences so the listener can catch up and understand. For example:
Identify Content Words
Why are you interested in working for us? What attracted you to our company?
Give me an example of a challenge you had to overcome as a member of a team.
What do you think is your greatest asset that you can contribute to our team?
The boy is going to school in the morning.
Give me an example of a challenge you had to overcome as a member of a team.
Part Two
Thought Groups and Sentence Stress
The rule to remember with sentence sress is that
last word of a thought group is stressed.
In English it is the responsibility of the speaker to be clear--not the responsibility of the listener to understand.
This is why at the conclusion of a thought group we include the pause to allow the listener to understand the content of the thought group.
We are going to listen to thirty seconds from the end of the 'Power Posing' TED talk. I want you to mark each thought group and stressed word from this text.
Thought groups convey the important content of a sentence. Thus, it is natural for the key content of a thought group to be stressed: pronounced louder and higher in pitch.
The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this. Tiny tweaks can lead
to big changes. So, this is two minutes. Two minutes, two minutes, two
minutes. Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation, for
two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator, in a bathroom stall, at your
desk behind closed doors. That's what you want to do. Configure your
brain to cope the best in that situation. Get your testosterone up. Get
your cortisol down. Don't leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn't
show them who I am. Leave that situation feeling like, I really feel like I
got to say who I am and show who I am.
Now, in the sentences above, which words are stressed? Content words or Function words?
How many stressed words are there usually in a thought group?
Where is the stressed word in a thought group usually placed?
content words
thought groups
What do you notice about and ?
Is there a pattern or something similar between in relation to ?
thought groups
content words
Thought Groups
Advanced Pronunciation:
Thought Groups
Advanced Pronunciation:
There are two kinds of words in spoken English: words and words
Content
Function
The key is to train your mind to listen for the tiny pauses created by .
thought groups
Function words are any of the following:
- Articles
- Particles
- Pronouns
- Prepositions
- Auxiliary verbs
- Conjunctions
Can you hear the difference between these two sentences?
1) The boy is going to school in the morning.
2) The boy is going to school in the morning.
Content words are any of the following:
- Nouns
- Verbs
- Adjectives
- Adverbs