May Week in Cambridge

Informational Educational Descriptive Texts. Written Speech

In recent years it has become fashionable in education to extol the importance of the spoken language with a depreciation of the values of reading, consequently skill in reading now is either low or inadequate. This situation needs considerations. As was stated in Chapter I, there is a gap between spoken and written varieties of the language and the task of the teacher is to differentiate these forms of the language appropriate to speech and writing and to assign to each their "proper" sphere. It is perhaps just to say that many teachers and lecturers recognize the gap but are unable to improve this state of affairs because of the lack of materials and methods.

These two varieties of the language differ psychologically and intellectually.

Talking is easier than the laborious solitary acts of reading. The reluctant reader will have to be given more cogent reasons for the efforts required of him. Reading aloud is even harder. It is neither spontaneous speech nor writing. In class it has purely educational purposes to stimulate pupils or students for prose and poetry appreciation and comprehension. Needless to say a written passage does not always coincide with a phonopassage. In reading aloud a written passage may be broken into several pho-nopassages or, on the contrary, short passages may be combined into one long lasting phonopassage.

We would like to recapitulate here that as has been mentioned in Chapter I, reading and speaking differ totally in the speech production activity as explained by certain basic psychological reasons. So in teaching to read we are simply helping to transfer from one medium to another. Reading and speaking each requires differently directed intensive efforts. Consequently, the phonetic features of these varieties of texts would be basically different.

We would like to start the phonostylistic analysis of the reading, in which some customs and traditions of Cambridge University life are described.

(Reading)

The- most 'interesting and biz'zare time of the year to visit .Cambridge | is during _vMay Week. || This is ~* neither in May |, nor it is a _vweek. || For - some .reason j which nobody now re>members | 'May Week is the 'name 'given to the I first 'two

'weeks in yJune |, the _»very end of the University 'year.III¹

V

The paradox is pleasantly quaint. | but is also in a way

apt. || May Week denotes 'not so much a particular ' period of.time | as the general 'atmosphere of relaxation and unwinding \ at the _end of the year's,work.

Any phonostylistic analysis falls into several steps. Obviously the first procedure will be the description of the speech situation which comprises the purpose, setting and participants. In reference to this text we may say that this is a descriptive narrative, the main purpose of the reader being just to give information, it has no secondary aim which creates a definite atmosphere of impartiality, thus the voice timbre is distinctly resonant, the speaker sounds dispassionate and rather reserved.

The presenter of the text is a student of Oxford University who has a clear advanced RP accent. The reading is directed to a group of students, Russian learners of English.

The next step is to define other extralinguistic factors, the degree of preparedness among them. The analyzed text may be characterized as half prepared or quazispontaneous as it was read through beforehand. Now to the characteristics on the pro-sodic level. One should undoubtedly begin with the delimitation. The text is split into phonopassages, then into phrases, then into intonation groups, correspondingly, the length of pauses is varied according to the text units. Pauses are made at syntactical junctures within the phrase and between them. However, potential syntagms are also quite common. The relevant length of pauses makes the reading careful and distinct so that the listeners could understand it without worrying over the meaning of a few difficult words.

Among the prosodic features we should mention the following:

Loudness is relatively stable and normal, but within a phono-passage boundaries there is a gradual decrease of it. Thus it is easy to spot the boundaries by loudness contrasts between the final and initial intonation groups of two adjacent phonopassag-es. The same could be said about levels and ranges: there is a distinctly marked decrease of them within the phonopassage.

The rate of utterances is normal or rather slow, not noticeably varied. Together with the medium length of pauses the general tempo may be marked as moderate.

The rhythm may be characterized as systematic, properly organized, interpausal stretches have a marked tendency towards the rhythmic isochrony.

One of the main style differentiating features on the prosodic level is the accentuation of the semantic centres. It is expressed commonly by terminal tones, pre-nuclear patterns, pitch range and pitch level degree of loudness on the accented syllables, and also by the contrast between the accented and non-accented segments of the utterance. In view of this particular text we may say the following.

Terminal tones are commonly expressed by a low falling tone: occasionally expressive high falls are used, this usage conveys the meaning directly; in non-final segments mid-level tones and low rising ones are quite frequent:

The -most 'interesting and bi^xzzare time of the year to visit.Cambridge | is during _гМау Week.

Pre-nuclear patterns are not greatly varied, falling and level types of heads prevail. Also several falls within an intonation group are typical for the reader:

The paradox is pleasantly ^vquaint | but is also in a way apt.

The contrast between accented and unaccented segments of phrases is not great, which is known to be a marker of any reading in general; the stress is decentralized, i.e. equally distributed on accented syllables of pre-nuclear patterns.

Table 3

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