- Rising intonation
and falling intonation.
In this English Pronunciation tutorial,
you're going to discover how to quickly and effectively
learn to use the two most important intonation patterns
that we use in English.
The rising intonation pattern
and the falling intonation pattern
are essential to be aware of
if you want to communicate clearly,
effectively and confidently
because English speakers
use these two intonation patterns
to convey meaning and emotion in English.
And if you don't know about these two patterns
and you accidentally use one instead of the other
then you can accidentally come across as rude
and even offensive in English
but if you know these intonation patterns
then you're going to be able to communicate
even more effectively in English.
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to communicate clearly, confidently,
and effectively in English
when you're speaking in meetings,
presentations and job interviews.
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Let's dive in to today's tutorial.
There are five intonation patterns in English
and in this tutorial, we're going to be looking
at the two most common and most important ones,
the rising and the falling.
I'm also going to show you the two ways
that you can use these intonation patterns
to ask questions in English just like a native would,
and I'll be getting to that in just a moment.
We're going to start with the falling intonation pattern
and then we're gonna get onto the rising intonation pattern
and that's important
because a lot of people make very big mistakes
with that one.
So the falling intonation pattern in English,
we use this to express confidence, certainty and finality.
And I'm now gonna give you an example of each of these
to show you what I mean.
If you say to me,
what's your name?
I'm confident that my name is Michael.
So I'm going to use a downwards intonation
and I'm gonna put that downwards intonation on the word
that is the most important word here, Michael.
So if you said to me, what's my name?
I'm confident that my name is Michael
so I'm going to say, Michael.
Okay! Michael, with a downwards intonation.
What about something that I'm certain about?
What I'm also certain about the fact
that this shirt is pink.
So if you said to me,
are you wearing a pink shirt?
And I'm certain about that, I could say, yes.
Yes.
Can you here it? It's going down.
What about finality?
Well, if I'm speaking and I get to the end of a sentence,
at the end of a sentence when I've finished,
to show that I finished talking,
I'm going to use a downward intonation.
Like I just did there, a downwards intonation.
A downwards intonation.
If I am talking about anything and I get to the end
and I'm showing you that I've finished,
a downwind intonation shows that I'm finished.
Okay? Can you hear it?
So those are the three ways that you would use
the falling intonation pattern in English.
What about the rising intonation pattern?
This is vitally important
because one of the main mistakes that people make
with intonation in English
is they will use a falling intonation
when they should use a rising intonation.
A rising intonation pattern is used
to show that we haven't reached finality
and that there is more to be said.
The main place where you want to get this correct
is to use an upward intonation
if you're expecting someone to say something back to you.
For example, if I ask a question with a yes or no answer,
is it hot today?
I'm expecting you to answer that question,
that's why I said, hot today,
on the word, today, at the end of a question,
I went up and used the rising intonation pattern
because I'm expecting an answer from you.
Now, there is a variation for questions
and I'm gonna get to that in a moment
but before I do that, let me give you another example
of a rising intonation pattern.
If I said to you,
have you heard the news?
Have you heard the news?
I'm expecting you to say, yes or no.
Yes you have, or no, you haven't.
Now, here's where you can get into trouble.
If you said yes, or no,
with a downwards intonation,
it's showing to me that either yes, you have,
or no, you haven't,
but here's what it implies,
it implies finality
and that there's nothing more to be said.
Have you seen the news today?
No.
If you answer with a downward inflection,
it implies that there's nothing more to be said about this.
And here's where it can come across as rude in English,
the person that has asked you that,
they might be expecting
to talk to you a bit more about that.
So if you reply with a downward intonation,
it shows finality
and to the person that you're talking to,
that there's nothing more to be said.
On the other hand, if I said to you,
have you seen the news today?
And then you said, no, with an upward intonation pattern,
it shows that there's something more to be said
and what that could mean is,
no, what's the news?
Tell me, tell me what the news is.
Tell me why you're asking me.
This is so, so, so important.
It's vitally important
to not use the downwards intonation pattern,
which expresses finality,
when you could be using the upward intonation pattern
to allow the person that you're talking to,
to go on with what they were saying.
Okay?
So, to summarize where we've got to so far,
the downwards intonation pattern
expresses finality, confidence, and certainty.
The upwards intonation pattern
shows that there's something more to be said
and it means I'm expecting you to give me something back
based on what I'm saying.
Don't make the mistake of going down
when your listener is expecting to be able to carry on
with what they're saying.
Now, I said that we use an upwards intonation pattern
if we're expecting a yes or no answer
to whatever it is that we're saying
but if we're asking a question
that requires something beyond a yes or no answer,
we're going to use a downwards intonation pattern
on the question.
This is something that native speakers do a lot of the time.
So if you want to sound a bit more like a native,
this can be a really effective thing to do.
So let me give you an example.
What's your name?
Your name isn't a yes or no,
it's gonna be something different to yes or no,
so downwards intonation pattern
and then you can say to me,
my name is John or my name is Sarah, okay?
Anything like that.
So upwards intonation pattern for yes or no questions,
downwards intonation pattern for questions that require more
than a yes or no answer.
The way that you can get the most from these techniques
is to practice these again, and again, and again,
because the way that we use intonation in English
may very well be different
to how we use intonation in your native language.
And if you've ever had the situation
where you've offended someone in English
without realizing why,
where you've not said anything rude or anything like that,
it might be,
because from the way that you have used intonation,
you have implied that you don't want to speak to them
through finality.
If you're having a conversation with someone
and every time you answer with a downward intonation,
it really implies that you don't have much more to say.
So I really don't want you to make these mistakes
with using the wrong intonation pattern, all right?
what I want you to do now is come up with some statements
and questions about yourself
and in situations
where you could see yourself speaking English,
practice them with rising intonation and falling intonation
and then leave a comment in the comments below
letting me know
how you're finding these two intonation patterns.
Discovering how to use intonation effectively
will enable you to speak English with much more emotion
and it will enable you to convey your meaning in English
much, much more effectively,
because ultimately, intonation is emotion in English.
You can express finality
and your confidence and your certainty
by using downward intonation patterns.
And you can express that there needs to be more
and that you want more
from using an upwards intonation pattern.
Now, if you found this tutorial useful,
then I highly recommend watching this tutorial next
where you're going to uncover
one of the main pronunciation mistakes
that non-native speakers make when they're speaking English.
So watch this video next. I'll see there in just a moment.
And if you found this tutorial useful,
turn that notification bell on when you subscribe
and I will see you in the next tutorial.