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Have students work in pairs or small groups to create a dialogue that shows different language to use when asking for clarification (teach this at some point in the week). Have students share dialogue with the class.

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More on Level 4

* 170 words
* 90 seconds
* pre-int / int
* 7 page PDF
* 11 online quizzes
* 3 reading speeds
* 5 listening speeds

* See info on all levels.

More Activities
Speed Reading 5-Speed Listening Mini Lessons Discussion Questions Prepositions
Try These Lessons
Business English Environment People, Entertainment & Gossip Technology

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Breaking News English - Graded News Articles

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Graded news articles, ideas, online activities and printable handouts that save you time - for news English and current events lessons.

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Listen to the teacher giving students advice for exams and do the exercises to practise and improve your listening skills.

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It's no surprise that many teachers don't feel confident about tackling it in the classroom. When teaching grammar or lexis, we find ways of making the language accessible to our learners. How then to do this with intonation?

Can I improve my own awareness of intonation?

What is intonation?
Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it's impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words.
Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention to the words: the 'melody' you hear is the intonation. It has the following features:

It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.

The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has their own pitch range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English has particularly wide pitch range.

Awareness of intonation aids communication.

Incorrect intonation can result in misunderstandings, speakers losing interest or even taking offence!

In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination of the two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit.

Provide learners with models - don't be afraid to exaggerate your intonation.

Let students compare two examples of the same phrase, eg: varied/flat intonation, English / L1.

Ask students to have a 2-minute conversation in pairs as 'robots' (elicit the word using a picture if necessary), i.e. with no intonation. When they then go back to speaking 'normally', point out that the difference is made by intonation - this is what gives movement to our voices.

Wh-word questions: falling intonation

Question-Tags: 'chat' - falling; 'check' - rising

Lists: rising, rising, rising, falling

Get students to imitate my intonation, but without words, just humming.

The first thing is for learners to recognise the effect of intonation changes. I say the word 'bananas' - firstly with an 'interested' intonation (varied tone); then 'uninterested' (flat). Students identify the two and describe the difference. We then brainstorm attitudes, such as 'enthusiastic', 'bored', 'surprised', 'relieved'. I say 'bananas' for these. Students then do the same in pairs, guessing each other's attitude.

This can be developed by asking students to 'greet' everybody with a particular attitude. At the end, the class identify each person's attitude. For younger learners, I use 'Mr Men' characters (Miss Happy, Mr Grumpy, Miss Frightened, etc.) Each student is allocated a character and, as above, they greet the class with that character's voice.

These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the intonation can completely change the meaning.

Example:

Say: 'It's raining'.

Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning. You could say it to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!'. There are many possibilities.

Why teach intonation?
Intonation exists in every language, so the concept we're introducing isn't new. However, learners are often so busy finding their words that intonation suffers. Yet intonation can be as important as word choice - we don't always realise how much difference intonation makes:

Though it's unlikely our learners will need native-speaker-level pronunciation, what they do need is greater awareness of intonation to facilitate their speaking and listening.

Can I improve my own awareness of intonation?
It's difficult to hear our own intonation. Choose somebody to listen to closely: as you listen, visualise the melody in your head, 'seeing' how it's divided into tone-units. Next time you do a class speaking activity, focus on your students' intonation. Are there students whose language is 'correct', but something doesn't sound right? Do they come across as boring or insincere? It may well be their pitch range isn't varied enough.

How I help my students
Awareness-raising
Some techniques I find useful for raising learners' awareness of intonation:

Intonation doesn't exist in isolation. So it makes sense to approach it together with other factors.

Intonation and grammar
Where patterns associating intonation and grammar are predictable, I highlight these to my students. I see these as starting-points, rather than rules.

Remember that intonation is relevant to any speaking activity, and makes interesting remedial/revision work.

Remember that students don't always have to 'know' we're focusing on intonation: every time I drill phrases they're hearing intonation models.

Provide realistic and clear contexts.

Avoid going into theory.

Help students find patterns / rules-of-thumb, wherever possible.

Use a consistent system for marking intonation on the board for example: arrow for tone; tonic-syllable in CAPITALS; double lines ( // ) for tone-unit boundaries.

Keep it positive and don't expect perfection. The last thing I'd want is to make my students so anxious about their intonation that they stop speaking!

Some examples are:

When practising these constructions, I include activities focusing specifically on intonation.

For example, Question-Tags: Students in groups are assigned jobs to mime to each other. Students make notes about what they think each person's job is. They then have to check they've understood the jobs: Students use rising/falling intonation question-tags depending how sure they are: 'You're a pilot, aren't you?'. At the end, students confirm their jobs.

Intonation and attitude
It's important that students are aware of the strong link between intonation and attitude, even if it's difficult to provide rules here.

Intonation and discourse

Learners' also need awareness of intonation in longer stretches of language. Here, we can give our learners clearer guidelines: 'new' information = fall tone; 'shared' knowledge = 'fall-rise'.

A simple shopping dialogue demonstrates this:

SK: Can I help you?
C: I'd like a chocolate (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise) ice-cream. Anything else?
C: One strawberry (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise), one strawberry (fall-rise). Anything else?
C: Yes. One chocolate (fall-rise), one strawberry (fall-rise), and one vanilla (fall).

Higher level students can identify the 'new' / 'shared' information, and then practise reading accordingly.

With lower level students, we memorise the dialogue together. Although I don't refer to intonation directly, I use my hands to indicate it (fall = hand pointing down; fall-rise = down then up). Students then prepare their own dialogues. I've found my learners pick up these patterns very quickly.

Conclusion
When working on intonation in the classroom I:

Further reading
Sound Foundationsby Adrian Underhill
Pronunciationby Dalton and Seidlholfer
How to Teach Pronunciation by Gerald Kelly
Teaching English Pronunciationby Joanne Kenworthy

Marta J. Sabbadini, British Council, Cameroon

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It's no surprise that many teachers don't feel confident about tackling it in the classroom. When teaching grammar or lexis, we find ways of making the language accessible to our learners. How then to do this with intonation? Can I improve my own awareness of intonation? What is intonation?

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Functions of the passive voice

The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence.

Examples

The passive voice is used frequently. (= we are interested in the passive voice, not in who uses it.)

The house was built in 1654. (= we are interested in the house, not in who built it.)

The road is being repaired. (= we are interested in the road, not in the people who are doing the repairs.)

Sometimes we use the passive voice because we don't know or do not want to express who performed the action.

Examples

I noticed that a window had been left open.

Every year thousands of people are killed on our roads.

All the cookies have been eaten.

My car has been stolen!

The passive voice is often used in formal texts. Switching to the active voice will make your writing clearer and easier to read.

If we want to say who or what performs the action while using the passive voice, we use the preposition by. When we know who performed the action and are interested in him, it is always better to switch to the active voice instead.

Read more about the passive voice and active equivalents for all English verb tenses.

Forming the passive voice

The passive voice in English is composed of two elements:
the appropriate form of the verb 'to be' + past participle

Affirmative

Negative

Interrogative

Negative Interrogative

The house was built in 1899.

The house wasn't built in 1899.

Was the house built in 1899?

Wasn't the house built in 1899?

These houses were built in 1899.

These houses weren't built in 1899.

Were these houses built in 1899?

Weren't these houses built in 1899?

To clean, passive voice

Passive voice with infinitives

The infinitive passive voice is used after modal verbs and other most verbs normally followed by an infinitive.

Examples

You have to be tested on your English grammar.

John might be promoted next year.

She wants to be invited to the party.

I expect to be surprised on my birthday.

You may be disappointed.

Passive voice with gerunds

Gerunds are used after prepositions and verbs normally followed by a gerund.

Examples

I remember being taught to drive.

The children are excited about being taken to the zoo.

The children are excited to be taken to the zoo.

Most film stars hate being interviewed.

Most film stars hate to be interviewed.

Poodles like to be pampered.

Poodles like being pampered.

Using "to be born"

"To be born" is a passive form and is most commonly used in the past tense. However, in some cases, the present or future tense is appropriate.

Examples

I was born in 1976.

Where were you born?

Around 100 babies are born in this hospital every week.

We don't know on exactly which day the baby will be born.

Sometimes the passive is formed using the verb to get or to have instead of the verb to be. A separate page deals with these alternative ways to form the passive voice.

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Functions of the passive voice The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences an action rather than the person or object that performs the action. In other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence.

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In English, verbs may be active or passive. In sentences with active verbs, the subject performs ("does") the action. In sentences with passive verbs, the subject receives the action. (That is, someone or something other than the actual subject grammatically performs the action.)

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A scary-easy way to help you find passive voice! | Grammarly Blog

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Rebecca Johnson you're a genius. Teachers everywhere should rejoice, and so should any students who haven't yet mastered passive voice. If you're still new to this and aren't sure how passive voice works or why Rebecca's work-around is so boo-tiful, let us explain.

Here's a tip: Want to make sure your writing always looks great? Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites.

Passive Voice

Odds are high that you have, at some point in your life, had passive voice marked on an essay or piece of writing. Odds are higher that you probably had no idea what in the world that meant. Basically, it is this. Passive voice is when the noun being acted upon is made the subject of the sentence. (Active voice is when the noun doing the action is the subject.) Let me explain with an example.

The house was haunted.

"The house" is the noun being acted upon, in other words "house" is the object of the verb "to haunt". It's clear here that the house is not doing the haunting. It is not doing the action. It is receiving the action. However, it is the subject of the sentence, which makes this sentence a passive voice sentence. (In an active voice sentence, the noun performing the action should be the subject. In this case, the active voice version would be: "Ghosts haunted the house.")

Using "by zombies" to help identify passive voice

If you are still having trouble understanding passive voice, here is where Rebecca's idea can help. Usually (but not always), passive voice can include the actor, usually following the verb. Basically, if you can add "by zombies" after the verb and it makes sense, you probably have passive voice.

The town was attacked (by zombies).

Yes, this makes sense; therefore, it is a passive voice sentence. To make this sentence active, you will need to put the noun doing the action in the subject location of the sentence. That is: "Zombies attacked the town." Now we can check for passive voice:

Zombies attacked the town (by zombies).

No, this doesn't make sense; therefore it is active voice.

These are simple examples and not every passive voice sentence will be identifiable with this trick, but it will help for a significant number of examples. If you would like to help others learn how to identify the passive voice, leave your tips, tricks, and exceptions in the comments!

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A scary-easy way to help you find passive voice!

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Rebecca Johnson you're a genius. Teachers everywhere should rejoice, and so should any students who haven't yet mastered passive voice. If you're still new to this and aren't sure how passive voice works or why Rebecca's work-around is so boo-tiful, let us explain. Here's a tip: Want to make sure your writing always looks great?

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In the humorous American television program Seinfeld, the characters often find themselves in strange situations because of small communication failures. These little misunderstandings grow to the point of total confusion.

For example, in one show, Jerry and George take a limousine, or limo, meant for other passengers. They act like they are those passengers by using their names.

Listen to George express excitement about what they have done:

This is incredible! This is one of the greatest things I've ever done in my life! I'm going to call my mother.
To tell her I'm in a limo.
Hello, ma. It's me. Guess where I am -​ in the back of a limo! No, nobody died.

Some of the planned passengers later unexpectedly get in the limo and begin to make unusual comments. Jerry and George are unsure what these comments mean. But they soon find out they are among very, very bad people.

On television, communication failures can make for funny stories. But in real life, you probably want to avoid such confusion.

In today's program, we will tell you how to get clarification on what someone has said or written.

When you ask someone for clarification, you are asking them to say something in a different way or provide more information so that you understand them better. This is different from asking a person to repeat something.

The person might not have explained themselves clearly, for example. Or maybe they used difficult language. Or maybe you think you know what the person means but want to make sure that you are correct.

Here is how you can respectfully get the information that you need.
Express lack of understanding
The first step is to tell the person that you are not sure that you have understood them fully. Let's listen to a few useful phrases:

Using the word "that" in two of the phrases is more suited for formal written communication, such as work-related emails.

Other times, you may understand part of what someone has said but need clarity on another part. In such situations, you can be more exact. Let's hear a few examples:

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "tech giants."

Sorry but I don't quite follow what you're saying about the new policy.

Ask for clarification
After you express your lack of understanding, the next step is to ask the person to clarify what they have said. Here are some phrases you can use.

For many of them, you can use "can" or "could," with could being a little more formal:

The phrase "When you say..., do you mean...?" of course is not a complete sentence. Here is how it sounds when complete:

When you say workers are on furlough, do you mean they're temporarily laid off from work?

Other times, you may simply need more information or a helpful example. In such situations, the following are useful:

"Could you elaborate on that?" is usually more suited to formal situations, such as in the workplace.
Put it together
OK, we have talked about the two steps. But we haven't yet put them together. Let's do that now. Listen to someone expressing lack of understanding and asking for clarification:

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand. When you say workers are on furlough, do you mean they're temporarily laid off from work?

Here's another example:

Sorry but I don't quite follow what you're saying about the new policy. Could you be more specific about gift card restrictions?
Confirm understanding
There are some social or professional situations in which you may want to avoid directly saying you haven't understood. In such cases, you can check your understanding by rephrasing what the person said. For instance, you might say, "Let me see if I understood you correctly. You are saying that..."

Let me see if I understood you correctly. You're saying that airport security workers are now working without pay?

Here is a very similar phrase: "If I understand you correctly, you're saying that..."

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that airport security workers are now working without pay?

Another phrase you might use is, "So, what you're saying is..."

So, what you're saying is (that) some hotels offer discounts to guests for not using their cellphones?

Or, you might say, "So, in other words...," which we usually use when we are restating something in a simpler way:

So, in other words, complex carbohydrates are starches that have not been refined.
Offer thanks
After the person clarifies themselves, you can let them know that you now understand and are thankful. Have a listen:
Clarify your ideas
There are other times when someone will ask you for clarification. In such cases, phrases like these can introduce what you want to say:

Of course, there are many ways to ask for or offer clarification, but we hope these examples help.

I'm Alice Bryant.
Alice Bryant wrote this story for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
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Practice

Now, you try it! Practice what you learned today. You can do one or all of the situations below. Write your responses in the comments section.
Situation 1
You are in a bank and you want to open a new account. The bank representative is describing the different types of accounts and telling you about online banking. You are not sure you understand his explanation of online banking. Express your lack of understanding and ask for clarification.
Situation 2
You missed an important assignment in one of your university classes. Your professor is telling you about things you can do to improve your grade. But she is not giving a lot of detail and hasn't said how much each thing will raise your grade. Ask her for more information.
Situation 3
You are at a doctor's office telling your doctor about a health problem. Your doctor gives you several suggestions to improve the problem. You think you understand but you want to make sure. Check that you've understood what your doctor has said.

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Words in This Story

character - n. a person who appears in a story, book, play, movie or television show

limousine - n. very large and comfortable car usually driven by a professional driver

phrase - n. a brief expression that is commonly used

formal - adj. suitable for serious or official speech and writing

lay off - v. the ending of employment of a worker or group of workers

discount - n. a price reduction

starch - n. a substance that is found in certain foods, such as bread, rice and potatoes

introduce - v. to present something for discussion or consideration

account - n. a record of money that has been paid and money that has been received

assignment - n. a task someone is required to do

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In the humorous American television program Seinfeld, the characters often find themselves in strange situations because of small communication failures. These little misunderstandings grow to the point of total confusion. For example, in one show, Jerry and George take a limousine, or limo, meant for other passengers.