RED – tell us about your family GREEN – where do you want to travel to? YELLOW – why do you want to study English? ORANGE – what is your dream job? PURPLE – do you like Ya’an? Why or why not? **Five sentences! **

UNIT 3: Focus in Discourse Learn about focus in discourse Understand how different focuses affect the meaning of a conversation Learn how to use focus to help express your meaning

What does “focus” mean? 焦点，注意焦点， 集中注意力

We focus the listener’s attention on our meaning. What does “focus” mean? We focus the listener’s attention on our meaning.

Why might it be important to us when communicating? What do you think we mean by “focus in discourse” or “focus in conversation?” Why might it be important to us when communicating?

What do you do in Chinese? What can we do to create focus in our sentences and in our communication? How DO we get our meaning across? What do you do in Chinese?

We’ve already learned key ways to create focus: stress, rhythm, and intonation

Chapter 2 Learn It #3

REVIEW How can we use intonation and stress to change the meaning? How many different meanings can we give this sentence? I didn’t tell you to kill him.

NOTICE IT How many different ways can we use stress and intonation to create different meanings in this sentence: I invited him to come over on Sunday.

The changes in stress and intonation that we just practiced actually changed the focus of the sentence.

Focus helps: Focus helps the speaker communicate exactly what they mean and feel Focus helps the listener understand what is important to the speaker they help you figure out the main point

Listen to me… what can you hear? You have no idea what I’m going to talk about. Listen to the story and write down the words that you hear the loudest. listen most to the stress, rhythm, and intonation

Listen to me… what can you hear? You have no idea what I’m going to talk about. Listen to the dialogue and write down the words that you hear the loudest. listen most to the stress, rhythm, and intonation

There are some easy ways to create focus in sentences.

Rule # 1: Emphasize new content **the subject of the sentence** content words: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs function words: prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, etc they carry the main meaning of the sentence new content words usually happen at the end of the sentence

Rule # 2: Emphasize new content over old content ** the new content word over old content words** old content words have already been mentioned in the conversation – the listener already knows about them as the conversation continues, different words are emphasized to show new information that is being added

Rule # 2: Emphasize new content over old content Do you like movies? Yes, I love Alfred Hitchcock movies. Oh, I think The Rise is a good Hitchcock movie. I’d love to watch it sometime. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Rule # 3: Highlight contrasts It’s either this or that. This is similar to when we changed the meaning of a sentence by the way we changed our stress on words. I’d like salt on my fries, but she just wants tomato sauce (ketchup).

Rule #4a: Correct something **focus the attention on what is wrong** Again, this is similar to emphasizing new content – the correction is giving the listener the new information so you will emphasize that part

Rule #4b: Modify previous information **you have brought up a topic, and you want to clarify or add to what you said about that topic** Coca-Cola is very unhealthy for you. It is unhealthy for your teeth, unhealthy for your bones, and unhealthy for your weight.

Rule #5: Emphasize agreement **this emphasis will be on the verb of the sentence, rather than on other content words**

Focus and WH-questions Because WH-questions usually cause the intonation of the sentence to have a falling pitch, if you are using the question to clarify something, there is usually emphasis placed on the WH question word to provide focus: How did she do that? Which party?

LEARN IT p.20

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Speaking Game My favourite colour is yellow. My name is ----- and… My favourite colour is yellow. I learned to drive a car when I was 16 years old. I am a “morning person” (I like to wake up early). I love winter and snow. I have three passports (护照).

My name is… and I…