Tenses, aspects, modality

What tense aspect or modal form should you use?





















present context


















present state














past event / action















present background














specific moment in the future












action completed before time in the future (future background)













past action only partially perceived













past habit














past background














general present















past background context














Series of events over a longer period of time in the past













future in the past













future plan














future arrangement














future very soon













a past habit that annoyed or frustrated you













distant future












How probable is it?








will




must





may





might/could






should






What's different about this one:


can














What's the difference between....













be done
have done














did
had done













doing
be doing













stop doing
stop to do

Fake Nice

Pronunciation

chemist 

Vocabulary

running low

at random

hand over

vague + ly

tick by

churlish

this and that

every bit as

perfectly disgusting, happily expectant

Everybody alright?

grin

take seriously

as practiced (practised)

weapon (figurative)

through gritted teeth

to betray a fact

call me + adj, but I'm not adj

a turn-off

to beam at

to zone out

soporific

spurious

perky

Speaking

Do people usually take you seriously?

Do you sometimes zone out in class?

Are you running low on energy at the moment?

What things about studying English do find a turn-off?

Think of some things that are soporifics - e.g. chamomile tea

Use words in a sentence

Class folder

On the Whole - attitude words and phrases and their intonation

 

Tips on Intonation and Rhythm

First watch the video, then read the text. Practice with the text in bold below.


Tips

Intonation is the rhythm and pitch of speech. Rhythm is based on stress. In English we stress words that represent important information. Important information often goes in this order:


1. Nouns

2. Verbs (especially near pronouns, which means the nouns are understood)

3. Adjectives/Adverbs

Of course, there can be many exceptions in different situations. For instance, maybe time is most important to you--you may stress the adverb instead of the noun.

Overall, when practicing pronunciation or preparing to speak publically, choose about two-four words per sentence that are most important to the meaning of what you need to say. Stress those words and then also de-stress the others.


Pause as You Speak

To deliver important information, you need to pause before or after the stressed word. You can often pause before words like "that" and "which," prepositions (in, on, at, for, around, etc.) and conjunctions (and, but, or) as well. Pausing gives the listener time to fully hear the important words.
   

 What Not to Stress

De-stressing (reducing stress on) the small words helps the stressed words to sound important. You can de-stress by reducing vowel sounds. "To" becomes "t'" as in "t'work." "And" becomes "'n" as in "bread 'n butter." "For" becomes "fr" as in "fr you." "Is" attaches as if you are speaking a contraction: for "she is" say "she's." We also can delete "h" when attaching "his/her/has/had" to the previous word. For instance, "lost her job" can read "lost'r job." Make sure you are pronouncing contractions also.

Practice reading the passage below. Stressed syllables of 2-3 syllable words are in capital letters. Stressed words are in bold print. A slash ( / ) indicates a good place to pause. Of course, you always pause for commas and periods.

Practice Text

My friend / has a new job. He is WORking / as an IT specialist / for the new bank / that Opened / down the street. He's exCIted / because he gets to creATE / his own poSItion / since the bank is new. The pay is good too. That's LUcky / because his wife / recently lost her job. She has been apPLYing / all over town / for the past two months / and HASn't had any luck. Now she's going to take one month off, reLAX, and then try again.

Practice speaking clearly and fluently using this game.

"5-down"

hold up four fingers and a thumb. Use 90 seconds to say five things about the random topic in front of the whole group. Focus on speaking clearly, loudly, and expressively.

Each person gets feedback from the group on 

Clarity

Volume

Expressivity

Bananas

Democracy

Children

Music

Lifestyles

Animals

How to speak so that people want to listen

What do the words above mean?

Give some typical examples

According to Julian Treasure these are 7 deadly sins of speaking.

Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody is listening? In this useful talk, the sound expert demonstrates the how-to's of powerful speaking — from some handy vocal exercises to tips on how to speak with empathy. A talk that might help the world sound more beautiful.

Watch:

How to speak so that people want to listen

Part 1: 7 deadly sins

1.  Gossip: speaking ____ of someone who isn't present.

2. Judging: no one likes to be judged and founding _____

3. Negativity: easy to ___ into this.

4. Complaining: the ______ ____ of the UK

5. Excuses: some people have a ____________

6. Lying: Embroidering and e________ become lying

7. Dogmatism: the confusion of ____ with _____

Pause

Are you guilty of any of these sins?

2:38

Part 2: 4 foundations

"Hail": to greet or acclaim with enthusiasm.

Pause

What do you think the 4 letters stand for?

H

A 

I 

L

Honesty needs to be tempered with _____

What two things can you not do at the same time?

Part 3: the toolbox

How do politicians use register?

What voice timbre do we prefer?

What is prosody? What is an example of bad prosody?

Pause:

Can you guess the last 4 tools?

P___

S___

P___

V_____

What is sodcasting?

Pause

Part 4: Warming up

Try the warm up.

Finally:

What is Julian's idea worth spreading?

Intonation table

Say the word "table" with intonation to express the following emotions:

Anger 

Sadness 

Afraid 

Happiness 

Anxiety 

Depression 

Confusion 

Embarrassment 

Disgust 

Love 

Boredom 

Annoyance 

Jealousy 

Nervous 

Frustration 

Self-confidence 

Loneliness 

Excited 

Envy 

Ashamed 

Worry 

Affection 

Calm 

Enthusiasm 

Oulipo and other outside-the-box approaches to writing

1. N + 7 Generator

Take piece of poetry or prose, substitute the nouns for the seventh noun that comes after that noun in the dictionary.

 
The Red Wheelbarrow 

so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens. 

Enter it into the N + 7 generator and the result is: 

The Red Whelp 

so much depends 

upon 

a red whelk 

basilica 

glazed with raisin 

waterproof 

beside the white 

childhoods. 

Try it with a verse or two from this famous NZ poem:

Rain

I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

There's even an N + 7 machine in the web!

Type in a simple text of your own, then press submit. See what you get!

N + 7 Machine 

2. Snowball

I 

am 

the 

text 

which 

begins 

sparely, 

assuming 

magnitude 

constantly, 

perceptibly 

proportional, 

incorporating 

unquestionable 

incrementations. 

Try it yourself.

3. Lipogram

A lipogram is a text composed deliberately without a particular letter, such as the letter 't'.

Excerpt from Gadsby, by Earnest Vincent Wright

"Now, any author, from history's dawn, always had that most important aid to writing:—an ability to call upon any word in his dictionary in building up his story. That is, our strict laws as to word construction did not block his path. But in my story that mighty obstruction will constantly stand in my path; for many an important, common word I cannot adopt, owing to its orthography."

Which letter is missing?

Here are some notes from my travel diaries 20 years ago!

On the promenade at sunrise 

  

Sun emerges dying everything apricot. Old-timers congregate. Small boats lay out nets. Crows and beggars try their luck. The sea impossibly smooth. Enormous dead rat having its guts pecked by crows. A dog yawns in the sun. 

  

    

On the promenade at midnight  

  

Children frolicking around the feet of the MG Monument. Twinkling lights of far-off fishing boats.     

  

  

India’s filthiest restaurant  

  

One waiter coughing incessantly over the customers while a cross-eyed youth continuously bumped into tables. Up on the hotel rooftop I watched the full moon struggle through the smog. Came back to the room to immaculately pressed laundry. 

  

  

Try rewriting one of the excerpts without a crucial letter, such as 't', or 's'. It's really challenging and really interesting.

4. The abecedarian

These can be narrative

Alice wanted to go to the park
But knew she had to study for
Class. Still, her friend
Diana asked her to go, and she was
Eager to get some fresh air.

Or you could try to write sentences where the words occur in alphabetical order.

Any bold, clever, daring explorer faces great hurdles, including jealous kings, lying mariners, native occupants, pusillanimous queens, really sneaky tyrants, usually vying with xenophobic young zealots.

A boisterous clown does every foolish game: hurling icicles, juggling kaleidoscopes, laughing maniacally, neglecting old pants, quickly revealing sparkling tight underwear, vamping while x-raying your zebra.

Artistically assembled, bagpipes blow, creating cacophony; drums deliver, echoes ensuing; flutes follow, generating gentleness; harmonicas help, in instances; jew’s-harps join, keeping kosher; lutes lightly make music noteworthy; now, oboes outclassed, piccolos peep quite quickly; rebecs reply so softly; the tuba, used untiringly, varies vastly while, with xyloid xylophones, yammers ye zesty zither.

5. Eunoia

Eunoia is a book by Christian Bök

There are 5 sections based on the vowels A, E, I, O, and U
 
 
from Chapter A 
(for Hans Arp) 
 
Awkward grammar appals a craftsman. A Dada bard 
as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an 
alpha (a slapdash arc and a backward zag) that mars 
all stanzas and jams all ballads (what a scandal). A 
madcap vandal crafts a small black ankh – a hand- 
stamp that can stamp a wax pad and at last plant a 
mark that sparks an ars magna (an abstract art that 
charts a phrasal anagram). A pagan skald chants a dark 
saga (a Mahabharata), as a papal cabal blackballs all 
annals and tracts, all dramas and psalms: Kant and 
Kafka, Marx and Marat. A law as harsh as a fatwa bans 
all paragraphs that lack an A as a standard hallmark. 
 
 
 
 

 
from Chapter E 
(for René Crevel) 
 
Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech. The 
text deletes selected letters. We see the revered exegete 
reject metred verse: the sestet, the tercet – even les 
scènes élevées en grec. He rebels. He sets new precedents. 
He lets cleverness exceed decent levels. He eschews the 
esteemed genres, the expected themes – even les belles 
lettres en vers. He prefers the perverse French esthetes: 
Verne, Péret, Genet, Perec – hence, he pens fervent 
screeds, then enters the street, where he sells these let- 
terpress newsletters, three cents per sheet. He engen- 
ders perfect newness wherever we need fresh terms. 
 
 
 
 
 
from Chapter I 
(for Dick Higgins) 
 
Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink 
this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism, 
disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks – impish 
hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib? 
Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits, 
writing shtick which might instill priggish misgiv- 
ings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit- 
picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I 
bitch; I kibitz – griping whilst criticizing dimwits, 
sniping whilst indicting nitwits, dismissing simplis- 
tic thinking, in which philippic wit is still illicit. 
 

 
from Chapter O 
(for Yoko Ono) 
 
Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. 
Books form cocoons of comfort – tombs to hold book- 
worms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post- 
docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who 
work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to 
work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm 
rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for 
bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: 
cookbooks, workbooks – room on room of how-to 
books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on 
pro sports: golf or polo. Old colophons on school- 
books from schoolrooms sport two sorts of logo: ob- 
long whorls, rococo scrolls – both on worn morocco. 
 
 
 
 

from Chapter U 
(for Zhu Yu) 
 
Kultur spurns Ubu – thus Ubu pulls stunts. Ubu shuns 
Skulptur: Uruk urns (plus busts), Zulu jugs (plus 
tusks). Ubu sculpts junk für Kunst und Glück. Ubu 
busks. Ubu drums drums, plus Ubu strums cruths 
(such hubbub, such ruckus): thump, thump; thrum, 
thrum. Ubu puns puns. Ubu blurts untruth: much 
bunkum (plus bull), much humbug (plus bunk) – but 
trustful schmucks trust such untruthful stuff; thus 
Ubu (cult guru) must bluff dumbstruck numbskulls 
(such chumps). Ubu mulcts surplus funds (trust 
funds plus slush funds). Ubu usurps much usufruct. 
Ubu sums up lump sums. Ubu trumps dumb luck.