Nigel J. Ross teaches at the City of Milan School for Interpreters and Translators and occasionally works as a teacher trainer. In this article he suggests some practical ways of teaching stress and intonation patterns using Lego® and Duplo® bricks.

Teacher trainers, resource books and handbooks often recommend using various visual aids to teach stress and intonation patterns. Cuisenaire rods are frequently suggested (see Taylor, for example), and strips of card, gummed paper squares, or simply rectangles drawn on the blackboard are regularly put forward as alternatives. But how many teachers actually use such teaching aids? Cuisenaire rods are hard to get hold of, especially if you live outside Britain. They are small, fiddly things that can only really be used with a very small group of students. Of the other teaching aids, strips of card need to be stuck up somewhere so students can see them, and the mechanics of sticking them up with Sellotape^® or BluTac^® can easily detract from the message you want to get across. Gummed paper squares are usually too small for the teacher to use with a fairly large class and not very easy to handle. So I have the impression that although most teachers would like to use a teaching aid for stress and intonation patterns, the practicalities often put a stop to any initial enthusiasm and visual aids are simply abandoned, or at best some uninspired rectangles may be drawn on the blackboard.

If you have ever found yourself in this kind of situation, do not despair, there is a solution, and it is a very easy and effective solution. In a nutshell, the ideal teaching aid is a set of Lego^® or Duplo^® bricks. Compared with cuisenaire rods, Lego and Duplo bricks are much easier to find - most teachers will be able to beg, steal or borrow some bricks from a son, daughter, niece, nephew or similar unsuspecting source. They are easy to handle and there is sufficient variety in size and colour for them to be very effective in the classroom. A set of large Duplo bricks is ideal for the teacher even in a big class while the smaller Lego bricks can be used by students themselves. They can be put together and taken apart without glue or Sellotape, and you can easily hold up and show a pattern that has been 'built'. In short they are easy to get hold of, visually stimulating, practical and very versatile.

A few practical examples should quickly reveal just how useful Lego can be in various situations. Let's first take a look at stress patterns in individual words. Here the main problem that arises is where to put the stress(es) in longer words. A couple of words I frequently hear pronounced with wrong stress patterns are necessary and calendar. Using two different kinds of bricks, smaller (square) bricks and larger (longer) bricks - preferably of different colours - the correct stress pattern can easily be 'built'. The smaller bricks represent the weak stresses and the larger ones the main stresses. Once they have been put together, the bricks need to be laid on their side so that the results look something like this:-

Some words cause stress problems for students from most parts of the world; other problems may arise from mother-tongue interference. Italian students, for example, often give a wrong main stress to words such as vegetable, important, category, cigar, accuracy, Japan, expensive and government, just to give a few examples. But many of these are bugbears for speakers from other language backgrounds, too.

Before going any further, however, it must not be forgotten that words like necessary often have a secondary stress, in this case on the 'sa-' syllable. American speakers in particular tend to give more of a stress to this penultimate syllable. Although at lower levels, it will probably be enough simply to concentrate on primary stress, it is worth pointing out secondary stresses to more advanced students. Three different sizes of Lego bricks can be used for strong, medium and weak stresses in words such as congratulations, comprehensive, secondary, international and television. Here are a couple of examples:-

Once stress patterns have been presented, some practical work with Lego bricks should stimulate all but the most unresponsive of students. Pairs or groups can be provided with lists of words and piles of bricks so that they can 'build' stress patterns. Another option is to present a series of patterns to be matched up to words (see Taylor, Appendix 6). Listening practice can be used to check that students can hear stress patterns (see Rogerson & Gilbert, Unit 4) and the patterns can be built up with Lego bricks in next to no time. Nouns and verbs that have the same written form but a different stress pattern, such as object, progress, present, record, can be practised in context. Shifts in word stress can also be emphasised with a few Lego bricks, eg. photograph, photography, photographic.

Stress patterns in short phrases can be dealt with in a very similar manner. The first three short examples below only have strong and weak stresses. In the second group of longer phrases, secondary stresses also come into play.

The same kind of practice work as suggested for individual words can be applied here. Moreover, younger learners could be encouraged to 'build' the stress patterns of some short rhymes, such as "One, Two, Buckle my Shoe" or "Three Blind Mice". At a higher level, sample stress patterns can be given and students can be asked to invent phrases that match the various patterns.

From longer phrases, it is only a short step to presenting stress patterns in full sentences and ultimately to demonstrating and practising intonation patterns in sentences. In order to gradually bring in aspects of intonation, sentences can be 'built' in the normal manner, but a different coloured Lego brick should be used for the last main stress. It would help if this is a more striking colour, such as red or yellow, so that it stands out from the other stresses. This is of course the 'tonic stress', the core of the main intonation pattern in the sentence. A sample sentence - an answer to the question "Where do you think the Beatles Museum is?" - might look something like this (the tonic stress being shown here on "Liv"):-

Assuming this sentence is said so as to provide information and the speaker is fairly sure about the fact, it would be said with a falling intonation. The Lego bricks can be joined together so as to show such an intonation pattern and the sentence can be 're-built' as:-

If, on the other hand, the speaker is rather unsure about the statement and wishes to invite confirmation, the sentence could have a rising intonation. The Lego bricks can once again be used to build the pattern, something along the lines of:-

Various intonation patterns become graphically clear when presented in this way, and there is no need to use those confusing little arrows that many teachers dislike. Probably it's enough to concentrate on the main rising and falling patterns with students at lower levels (see Barnes; Rogerson & Gilbert, Units 15 & 16; or Taylor, Section IV), and the secondary stresses can perhaps be ignored and lumped together with weak stresses. With higher level students, Lego bricks can be a useful classroom aid to more in-depth practice (eg. Brazil). Once again, after some initial teacher presentation of intonation patterns, students can be asked to 'build' a pattern they've heard - perhaps something from a tape, to start with - and then put together a pattern from a printed source and read it aloud with an intonation that matches the Lego. Teachers can thus check on intentions as well as performance.

I hope these few quick ideas and examples will be enough to spur on teachers to devote a little more time in the classroom to stress and intonation patterns. A practical and versatile visual aid such as Lego can go a long way to helping get across a rather complex concept in an effective way. Why not give it a try!

References
Barnes, Peter (1987) Phonology: the Sounds of English, in Bolton, W.F. & Crystal D. (ed) The English Language (vol. 10 of The Penguin History of Literature) Penguin, London.
Brazil, David (1994) Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Rogerson, Pamela & Gilbert, Judy B. (1990) Speaking Clearly, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Taylor, Linda (1993) Pronunciation in Action, Prentice Hall International, London.

   Published in Modern English Teacher (Vol 5/2, April 1996) Modern English Publications, UK.