Mastering English Intonation: A Comprehensive Guide

Many people think that intonation in English  is this complicated web of a million rules and   various tones. If you are one of these people  that believes this, then this lesson is going   to help you. I'm going to make English intonation  really simple for you today. So simple in fact,  

that by the end of this lesson, you're going to  fully understand the rules of intonation and be   able to use intonation correctly when you speak  English. Today you're going to learn what is   intonation? What is the difference between stress  and intonation? Why is intonation important? And  

then you're going to learn about the rules of  intonation and practise your English intonation   with me. I also just want to quickly add because  every time I do a video with a teacup people are   like 'why is there no tea inside?' and it's  because I've drunk half of the tea inside,  

so yeah. I actually made this mug, well, I didn't  make it, I painted it and you can see the little   flowers on and this here holds your biscuit,  so yeah. So let's start with what is the best   way to improve your English intonation besides  listening carefully to other English speakers  

around you and taking note of how they use  intonation in different contexts. One of the   best ways to improve your English pronunciation  is by taking one-to-one lessons with a private   English teacher. An English teacher will go  through the rules of intonation with you and  

ensure that you're using the correct intonation  for different contexts, because the last thing you   want to do is cause any confusion any mistakes  in communication, or worse, potentially offend   someone using the incorrect intonation. So  where can you find the perfect English teacher  

to help you improve your spoken English and  pronunciation? The best place to find your perfect   English teacher is on Preply. With thousands  of English teachers to choose from on Preply,   you're bound to find your perfect English teacher.  You can easily find a teacher who's qualified,  

experienced, and professional, who suits your  budget, your learning styles, and of course,   your availabilities. I'm giving you 50% off your  first lesson on Preply! Just use the code 'EMMA'.   As a bonus to you, you can also download the free  PDF lesson notes for this video down below in the  

description. The lesson notes contain, of course,  a summary of all the notes and all of the rules of   intonation mentioned in this lesson as well as all  the examples and some additional sentences for you   to practiSe with your teacher or by yourself. The  link to book your first lesson on Preply is down  

below in the description. Click it and remember  to use the code 'EMMA' to get 50% off your   first lesson and start getting feedback on your  intonation and pronunciation, so you can improve   much faster. Thank you Preply for being a sponsor  of this video, but besides being a sponsor, I also  

do take private lessons for Spanish on Preply, so  I use it as a student, I've used it as a teacher,   and my experience has been fantastic so far, so  I highly recommend it. Now it's time to start   learning about intonation. Let's start with the  first question, what is intonation? Intonation  

in English refers to the rise and fall of your  voice while you're speaking. You use intonation   to convey emotion and meaning. Intonation plays  a crucial role in the expression of questions,   statements, emotions, and it can even change  the meaning of words and sentences. For example,  

look at this sentence. You're leaving. You can  completely change the meaning of this sentence   by changing the intonation. With a rising  intonation at the end it sounds like you're   may be a bit surprised or you're just checking  if the person's actually leaving for example 'oh  

you're leaving'. With a falling intonation at the  end it sounds more like a statement, for example,   maybe you already know the person's leaving  and you're just acknowledging it 'oh you're   leaving?'. As you can see intonation completely  changes the interpretation of a sentence,  

making it super important for you to learn. What  is the difference between stress and intonation?   I've included this question because a lot of  people think that stress and intonation are the   same thing and they're almost interchangeable  terms, but stress and intonation are not the  

same thing. However, they are kind of like  sisters. What I mean by that is you'll often   find them go together so they're not the same  thing, but usually they accompany each other.   Stress refers to the emphasis that you place on  a word or in a part of a sentence, for example,  

if I say 'really' with a falling intonation at the  end you can still hear that the stress is on the   first syllable, while if I say 'really', now you  can hear that the intonation goes up at the end,   but the stress is still on the first syllable.  Now when you change the intonation, notice  

that the meaning also changes 'really', with a  falling intonation sounds more like a statement,   while really sounds like I'm either asking a  question or I'm surprised. Why is learning about   intonation in words important? Intonation helps  to give meaning and emotion to what you're saying,  

it's so important for clarifying meanings  expressing your feelings and emotions as well   as managing the flow of a conversation. Learning  about intonation in English will not only help   you to convey your emotions and feelings  and thoughts but it will also help you to  

understand other people's intentions behind what  they're saying in other words you can study all   the vocabulary in grammar in the world, but if you  don't understand how intonation works in English,   it can lead to communication problems. Now  let's look at intonation in words and how  

to use intonation in words. When it comes  to words with just one syllable in English,   your intonation will either slide down or slide  up when you're speaking, for example, 'yes' and   'yes'. Freya has come to say hi. Hi baby. She  has a little infection in her eye so she's a  

little bit gunky today. Hi baby, say hi. .ittle  cutie. Leave the tea, leave the tea alone, leave   the tea alone. 'Yes' sounds like you're asking a  question or you're perhaps unsure about something.   It could also indicate that you're about to add  extra and further information, for example 'have  

you finished writing your essay yet? Yes well I  just need to finish writing the conclusion but   it should only take me about 10 minutes.' When you  have a word in English with two or more syllables,   your intonation will jump, for example 'never'  and 'never'. Notice I'm not saying 'never',  

it's not sliding, it's 'never' 'never', there's a  jump between those two syllables. 'Have you ever   been to Madrid? No, never. Never?'. Intonation in  sentences. When you stress words in sentences in   English you'll notice that your intonation  rises on those important stressed words,  

for example 'I need to study' 'I need to study'.  Notice that the words 'I' and 'to' are very weak   here and your tone is very low, however, notice  that your intonation on the important words   'need' and 'study' goes up. With 'need', because  it's just one syllable, your intonation starts  

high and then it slides down 'need', with 'study'  your intonation goes high on that first syllable,   because it's stressed, and then it lowers, it  jumps down, when you say the second syllable,   because this is weaker and also it's the end  of the sentence, 'study'. Intonation in normal  

speech. Typically in normal speech you will  find a falling intonation at the end of the   sentence. This indicates that you've finished what  you're saying, for example 'he arrived at noon',   you've finished your sentence, so your intonation  falls on' noon'. When you finish your sentence,  

you typically end with a falling intonation, which  is why 'noon' ends with a falling intonation.   However, if you want to show that you haven't  finished speaking yet, you can use a rising   intonation, for example 'when I opened the door  I got the fright of my life' 'when I opened the  

door I got the fright of my life', so if I ended  the sentence on 'when I open the door', the other   person would be sitting in suspense thinking  'and? And? Finish the sentence!' because I   ended with a rising intonation. So to show to the  other person 'look, I've finished speaking now',  

you can end with a falling intonation. Giving  old and new information. You can use intonation   to indicate what is new and old information for  your listener. When you think the information is   new for your listener, the intonation at the  end of your sentence goes down. If you think  

your listener already knows something, or if  something's quite obvious, then your intonation   will rise at the end of what you're saying. You  can also use rising intonation with information   that's a bit redundant, in other words, it may  be something that you've repeated from a person's  

question or something repeated that someone said  earlier, for example 'what time did Lisa leave?   I heard her leave at about 5 o'clock'. 'I heard  her leave' is redundant information because the   first person said 'what time did Lisa leave',  we're basically repeating a bit of the question,  

it's redundant, it's shared knowledge, shared  information, so your intonation rises, however,   the new information is 'at 5 o'clock'. This  is new, therefore the intonation goes down at   the end. Alternatively, you can flip this sentence  around and the intonation will still stay the same  

way because it doesn't matter where these phrases  are all it matters is what information is there,   so you could say for example 'at about 5:00 I  heard her come in'. It sounds weird, it sounds a   bit like Yoda speech, but it's possible because we  don't really care where these phrases are in the  

sentence, all we care about is whether it's new or  old information. Questions, genuine and checking   for information. If you believe that you must use  a rising intonation at the end of every question,   then you are wrong. Questions in English are  usually clear from their grammatical structure,  

for example I could say 'you have eaten' and  we know that this is a statement, however,   'have you eaten?' is more of a question, we know  that because of the grammatical structure. This   means that intonation in questions in English  can be very flexible. You can use different  

intonation in questions to show different  meanings or different types of questions.   If you want to ask a question and you don't  know the answer, so it's a genuine question,   then your intonation usually falls at the end,  for example 'when's your birthday?'. I'm asking  

you with a falling intonation because I genuinely  don't know when your birthday is, however, if you   want to check or clarify something, so maybe you  already know the answer and you're not 100% sure,   or you just want some clarification, then your  intonation usually Rises at the end. so let's  

stick with the same question we had before,  imagine I say 'when's your birthday?' and I   use a rising intonation at the end, this sounds  more like you've told me your birthday before,   but I don't remember when it is exactly. I've  forgotten. you can also use a falling intonation  

at the end of questions when you want someone to  agree with something that you've said, for example   'isn't it cold today?' I'm not genuinely asking if  it's cold or not, I'm making a bit of a statement   but in the form of a question because I want you  to agree with me. I'm trying to create a bit of  

a conversation with you. You can also use rising  intonation in questions when you want to express   criticism, for example 'are you crazy?'. Or you  can use it for surprise 'how much are these?' be   careful when using intonation like this because  there is a huge difference between 'how much  

are these?' and 'how much are these?'. The first  one sounds like you're asking a genuine question   because we're using a falling intonation like  'when's your birthday?' 'how much are these?',   it's a real genuine question that you want know  the answer to, so your intonation falls. The  

second one 'how much are these?' sounds  like you're really shocked or surprised,   like you can't believe the price of something,  so it can come across as quite rude or offensive,   so be really careful. Sometimes when you ask a  question you may have an idea what the answer is,  

so you may want to add that after your question.  If you want to do this, then you add a fall-rising   tone to that little question with that suggestion  at the end, for example 'what time does the show   start? At 2:00?' 'at 2:00?'. I'll give you another  example #where have you been all day? At work?'  

'At work?' and you notice that the intonation  goes really down and then really back up again.   This is the fall-rising intonation. Intonation in  question tags. A question tag, or tag question,   you can use either one is a short phrase that  we add to the end of a statement to turn it  

into a question, for example .you're coming to the  party, aren't you?'. You can use question tags for   checking information, seeking agreement, giving  opinions, being a bit critical and sarcastic,   and for even emphasising things, so you can use  it to emphasise something that was said earlier.  

Let's talk about the intonation in tag questions  when checking information. The intonation in the   first part will fall but the intonation in the  second part the little question tag will go up,   for example 'the film starts at 12, doesn't it?'.  Here we think that the film starts at 12 but we're  

not 100% sure, so we're just checking. Now if you  want to say something and you're not checking for   information and you believe that it's true, you  know that it's true, then your intonation will   fall and fall on the tag question as well, for  example 'it's so hot today, isn't it?', like,  

we know it's hot it's like 45° outside, so yeah,  you can't deny it, yeah, right. Now luckily it's   not 45° but you are so annoying, aren't you?  She's not annoying, she's lovely. Now let's   look at seeking agreement and giving opinions. If  you're sharing a belief or an opinion and you want  

your listener to agree with you, then you can use  falling falling intonation, for instance 'the film   was great, wasn't it?' my intonation goes down on  the question tag, because I'm not actually asking   for clarification or confirmation or anything I'm  basically sharing my opinion and I want you to  

agree with my opinion. Now if you want to sound  more sascastic, ouuu, if you want to sound more   sarcastic, you can use a RISING* intonation. We  usually start these sarcastic phrases with 'oh',   'so and sometimes 'well'. for example  'so you think you stronger than me,  

do you?' 'oh you think you're smarter than me,  do you?'. Here I'm not asking an actual question,   I'm not being genuine and being a bit sarcastic.  Notice as well that I'm using a positive phrase   with a positive question tag. When you were first  taught about question tags, your teacher may have  

explained to you that you must use a positive and  a negative together, so your question tag should   be negative in your statement before that should  be positive so it's always positive-negative or   negative-positive, however, look at what happens  when you use positive-positive it can give the  

impression of sarcasm or it can be used for  surprise. Here's another example 'eating all   that cake to yourself, are you?' notice how using  positive-positive actually sounds quite sarcastic   and quite critical like 'oh you're actually eating  all that cake to yourself, are you?' again I'm not  

asking a real genuine question I'm being a bit  critical quite judgmental of the other person   for eating the whole cake which I never would  cuz I am that person that eats the whole cake.   Sticking with the theme of sounding a little bit  mean and adding some attitude to your intonation,  

if you want someone to admit something  that they didn't previously want to admit,   or something that they previously didn't believe,  then you can use a falling intonation. For example   'I told you not to touch that flame, didn't I?'  so maybe the person before said 'ha ha I'm going  

to touch the flame I'm going to touch the flame'  and you said 'you know, if you touch that flame,   you're going to hurt yourself' then they touch  the flame, then you can turn around and say 'I   told you not to touch the flame, didn't I?'. Yeah,  falling falling. Finally if you want to emphasise  

something that you said before, you can use a  falling intonation to do this, for example 'that   was a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?' falling,  falling. So you could just say 'that was a stupid   thing to do' but to really emphasise it, you can  add that question tag at the end cuz it kind of  

makes the other person think like 'oh yeah, it was  a stupid thing to do' and if you want to do that,   use a falling falling intonation, 'that was  a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?'. Now let's   look at the intonation in questions when you want  to give your listener options. When you want to  

give two possible options to your listener, your  intonation will go up on the first option and then   down on the second option, for example 'do you  prefer tea or coffee?' 'tea or coffee'. Here's   another one 'do you want to leave now or later?'  'now or later'. So if you have more options like,  

for example, you may want to say tea, coffee or  juice, it will just keep going up until you get to   the final option, and then the final option will  have a falling intonation, 'do you prefer tea,   juice, or coffee?' so it doesn't matter how many  options you have, you just keep listing them with  

a rising intonation and then the final one will  have a falling intonation to indicate that it's   the end of all the possible options. And finally,  intonation in lists. This rule is quite similar   to the one that we've just looked at, so when you  are giving a list in English and you're reading it  

aloud all of the things on the list will have  a rising intonation to show that the list is   continuing, but then the final item on that list  will have a falling intonation and that falling   intonation will indicate 'hm okay that's the end  of the list'. for example 'so I need to buy some  

eggs, milk, bread, and butter'. So when reading  a list, if you keep using a rising intonation   and you say something like 'so I need to buy  some eggs, milk, bread...' and you just stop,   then your listener will be like 'and?? And??' cuz  they're waiting for you to complete that list with  

a falling intonation. And that's the end of your  master class on everything you need to know about   intonation in English. Your next step now is to go  and book your first lesson on Preply and practise   what you've learnt today. You can book your first  lesson using the link down in the description and  

remember to use the code 'EMMA' for 50% off your  first lesson. If you would like a summary as well   as some additional sentences to practise and some  activities to remember the rules of intonation,   you can download the free PDF. The link to  download it is down in the description. If  

you've enjoyed this lesson then remember to hit  the 'like' button and subscribe if you'd like to   see more videos to help you improve your English  pronunciation and listening skills. If you've   watched all the way to this part of the video,  then thank you so so much, I really appreciate  

your time, and I hope that this video has  helped you. If you like, you can leave a comment   finishing the sentence 'I found this video....'  and then fill in that blank with an adjective   that best describes how you found this video, for  example 'I found this video useful' 'I found this  

video helpful' 'I found this video fun', however  you feel about the video, let me know. Enjoy the   rest of your week and I will see you in the next  lesson. My tea is now stone cold, it's still   in there but never mind. I hope you've enjoyed  this lesson I will see you next time. Bye bye!