The Melody of English

Intonation signals to your audience that you are connecting thought units or ending them.  Sometimes we end them with finality, uncertainty, questions, or excitement, for example.   Intonation helps listeners follow you with ease.  Intonation also gives language a melody and keeps it from sounding boring.  This course will teach you proper breathing that works in sync with your intonation.  You will also learn how to divide vowels so that the vowels can carry the intonation.  Then you will apply the vowel movement knowledge to intonation patterns .  Finally you will learn how we use intonation to highlight the most important word in a chunk of information, and how to pick the most important word so that your listeners can easily follow you.  Each video lesson invites you to either repeat a word or phrase after the instructor or repeat along with the instructor. The lessons include instructor explanation and examples, along with charts, intonation drawings and stress markings so that you can see what you are hearing.  The course is accompanied by written lessons that you can print out and use to follow along and take notes.  After each lesson, you are invited to use the repetition audio provided to build muscle memory of your newly developed skills.  The more you use the repetition audio the better!   There are extra sentences in the repetition audio that are not in the videos, for extra exposure and practice.  The instructor is always making new lessons to add , so the course will grow with you.  Your feedback is invited so that the instructor can made new lessons that will be useful for you.