Please note that some of the 'facts' below have been proven false myths. An example is the duck's echo which does not echo (but proved that it does).
It is impossible to lick your elbow
A crocodile can't stick it's tongue out.
A shrimp's heart is in it's head.
People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,your heart stops for a mili-second.
In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.
It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
Rats and horses can't vomit.
If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.
If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
If you keep your eyes open by force when you sneeze, you might pop an eyeball out.
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.
A crocodile can't move its tongue and cannot chew. Its digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail.
Money notes are not made from paper, they are made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen. In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made out of wood for a brief period.
The Grammy Awards were introduced to counter the threat of rock music. In the late 1950s, a group of record executives were alarmed by the explosive success of rock ‘n roll, considering it a threat to "quality" music.
Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water. The tea bag was introduced in 1908 by Thomas Sullivan of New York.
Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialised nations has increased 10 cm (about 4 inches). In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1,71m (5'6"). Today, the average height for American men is 1,75m (5'7"), compared to 1,77 (5'8") for Swedes, and 1,78 (5'8.5") for the Dutch. The tallest nation in the world is the Watusis of Burundi.
In 1955 the richest woman in the world was Mrs Hetty Green Wilks, who left an estate of $95 million in a will that was found in a tin box with four pieces of soap. Queen Elizabeth of Britain and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands count under the 10 wealthiest women in the world.
Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.
In 1935 a writer named Dudley Nichols refused to accept the Oscar for his movie The Informer because the Writers Guild was on strike against the movie studios. In 1970 George C. Scott refused the Best Actor Oscar for Patton. In 1972 Marlon Brando refused the Oscar for his role in The Godfather.
The system of democracy was introduced 2 500 years ago in Athens, Greece. The oldest existing governing body operates in Althing in Iceland. It was established in 930 AD.
A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you'll feel thirsty.If it's reduced by 10%, you'll die.
According to a study by the Economic Research Service, 27% of all food production in Western nations ends up in garbage cans. Yet, 1,2 billion people are underfed - the same number of people who are overweight.
Camels are called "ships of the desert" because of the way they move, not because of their transport capabilities. A Dromedary camel has one hump and a Bactrian camel two humps. The humps are used as fat storage. Thus, an undernourished camel will not have a hump
In the Durango desert, in Mexico, there's a creepy spot called the "Zone of Silence." You can't pick up clear TV or radio signals. And locals say fireballs sometimes appear in the sky.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
Bill Gates' first business was Traff-O-Data, a company that created machines which recorded the number of cars passing a given point on a road.
Uranus' orbital axis is tilted at 90 degrees.
The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.
Outside the USA, Ireland is the largest software producing country in the world.
The first fossilized specimen of Australopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the paleontologists' favorite song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," by the Beatles.
Figlet, an ASCII font converter program, stands for Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.
Hot water is heavier than cold.
Plutonium - first weighed on August 20th, 1942, by University of Chicago scientists Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues - was the first man-made element.
If you went out into space, you would explode before you suffocated because there's no air pressure.
The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.
The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives.
This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.
Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
On average, half of all false teeth have some form of radioactivity.
Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor: the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.
Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are leaning over your morning paper.
Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.
A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.
A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.
A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
An ordinary TNT bomb involves atomic reaction, and could be called an atomic bomb. What we call an A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb.
At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.
At a jet plane's speed of 1,000 km (620mi) per hour, the length of the plane becomes one atom shorter than its original length.
The first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22, commonly called the first day of winter, happened in 1999. Since a full moon on the winter solstice occurred in conjunction with a lunar perigee (point in the moon's orbit that is closest to Earth), the moon appeared about 14% larger than it does at apogee (the point in it's elliptical orbit that is farthest from the Earth). Since the Earth is also several million miles closer to the sun at that time of the year than in the summer, sunlight striking the moon was about 7% stronger making it brighter. Also, this was the closest perigee of the Moon of the year since the moon's orbit is constantly deforming. In places where the weather was clear and there was a snow cover, even car headlights were superfluous.
According to security equipment specialists, security systems that utilize motion detectors won't function properly if walls and floors are too hot. When an infrared beam is used in a motion detector, it will pick up a person's body temperature of 98.6 degrees compared to the cooler walls and floor.If the room is too hot, the motion detector won't register a change in the radiated heat of that person's body when it enters the room and breaks the infrared beam. Your home's safety might be compromised if you turn your air conditioning off or set the thermostat too high while on summer vacation.
Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.
On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.
Ostriches are often not taken seriously. They can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.
Seals used for their fur get extremely sick when taken aboard ships.
Sloths take two weeks to digest their food.
Guinea pigs and rabbits can't sweat.
The pet food company Ralston Purina recently introduced, from its subsidiary Purina Philippines, power chicken feed designed to help roosters build muscles for cockfighting, which is popular in many areas of the world.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the cockfighting market is huge: The Philippines has five million roosters used for exactly that.
Sharks and rays are the only animals known to man that don't get cancer. Scientists believe this has something to do with the fact that they don't have bones, but cartilage.
The porpoise is second to man as the most intelligent animal on the planet.
Young beavers stay with their parents for the first two years of their lives before going out on their own.
Skunks can accurately spray their smelly fluid as far as ten feet.
Deer can't eat hay.
Gopher snakes in Arizona are not poisonous, but when frightened they may hiss and shake their tails like rattlesnakes.
On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.
The duckbill platypus can store as many as six hundred worms in the pouches of its cheeks.
The lifespan of a squirrel is about nine years.
North American oysters do not make pearls of any value.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
Many sharks lay eggs, but hammerheads give birth to live babies that look like very small duplicates of their parents. Young hammerheads are usually born headfirst, with the tip of their hammer-shaped head folded backward to make them more streamlined for birth.
Gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day.
A biological reserve has been made for golden toads because they are so rare.
There are more than fifty different kinds of kangaroos.
Jellyfish like salt water. A rainy season often reduces the jellyfish population by putting more fresh water into normally salty waters where they live.
The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.
The odds of seeing three albino deer at once are one in seventy-nine billion, yet one man in
Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, took a picture of three albino deer in the woods.
A group of twelve or more cows is called a flink.
Cats often rub up against people and furniture to lay their scent and mark their territory. They do it this way, as opposed to the way dogs do it, because they have scent glands in their faces.
Cats sleep up to eighteen hours a day, but never quite as deep as humans. Instead, they fall asleep quickly and wake up intermittently to check to see if their environment is still safe.
Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is an herb with nepetalactone in it. Many think that when cats inhale nepetalactone, it affects hormones that arouse sexual feelings, or at least alter their brain functioning to make them feel "high." Catnip was originally made, using nepetalactone as a natural bug repellant, but roaming cats would rip up the plants before they could be put to their intended task.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans ages the equivalent of five human years for every day they live, so they usually die after about fourteen days. When stressed, though, the worm goes into a comatose state that can last for two or more months. The human equivalent would be to sleep for about two hundred years.
You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36.
Money isn't made out of paper; it's made out of cotton.
The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the varieties of pickle the company once had.
Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks - otherwise it will digest itself.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
Every person has a unique tongue print as well as fingerprints.
315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear any pants.
Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower' because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!
There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!
Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.
A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It's the same with apples!
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.
The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
Of all the words in the English language, the word ’set’ has the most definitions!
What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
"Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.
In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child
A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off.
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath
There is a city called Rome on every continent.
It’s against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland.
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
Horatio Nelson, one of England’s most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump!
One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different!
The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.
Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
On average a hedgehog’s heart beats 300 times a minute.
More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
More people are allergic to cow’s milk than any other food.
Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
It’s against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
You’re born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!
Dolphins sleep with one eye open!
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
Slugs have 4 noses.
Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
The average person laughs 10 times a day!
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
The human heart! creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death!
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories a hour
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
A cat's urine glows under a black light.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Starfish have no brains.
Polar bears are left-handed.
Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
LAPTOP TIPS
LAPTOP MAINTENANCE TIPS
Laptops are expensive gadgets made for mobility. Generally, they are not very tough, and are not known to take too well to being mishandled. If you do end up messing your laptop, even the smallest of repairs will set you back by thousands of rupees. Read on to learn how to care for your laptop. We have also included some important pointers you need to stick to before, during and after using your laptop.
Clean It Right
Since your laptop is such an expensive gadget (falling prices notwithstanding), be extremely careful while cleaning the screen. Make sure the cloth is very soft, and has no imprints or monograms on it, as these may scratch the screen. Also ensure that the cloth is lint-free, else it will leave fibres on the screen, and make the display unclear. Make sure you don't spray any cleaner directly on the screen. Instead, spray onto the cleaning cloth, and allow the cloth to capture the dirt and contaminants.
Choosing The Spray
The screen is the most expensive component of your laptop. Adequate care must be taken while choosing the cleaning spray. Harsh sprays could turn the screen yellow, and may even cause cracking. Use plain water or vinegar to clean the screen.
Placing The Laptop
Hard drives work on the property of magnetic flux, so any electrical field may damage the hard disk and the data on it. Make sure your laptop is at least 13 cm away from any electrical appliance that generates a strong magnetic field-such as a microwave oven.
Give It A Breather
If you have just shut down your laptop, give it 30 seconds before you start it up again. This ensures that the hard drive has spun down, and is not subjected to sudden switching on and off.
Data Backup
Always back up your data. Laptops are mobile devices, and are susceptible to breakage. Also, it's possible that the hard disk simply crashes. Remember, you can never back up too frequently.
Laptop Battery Care
The bane of most laptop users is the lack of a really long battery life. There are three main types of laptop batteries:
Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd)
Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH)
Lithium Ion (Li-ion).
Nickel-Cadmium
This type of battery must be fully discharged and then fully recharged every few weeks. If you don’t do this, it will quickly lose battery life due to what is known as the `memory effect'.
The memory effect means if you don't follow the above procedure, your battery will only charge up to the percentage of the last charge. For instance, if you discharge it to 30 per cent, it will only charge up the remaining 70 per cent. Do this repeatedly, and the 30 per cent will become unusable, giving you an effective 70 percent charge even though the indicator will still show a 100 per cent charge each time you charge it.
Nickel Metal Hydride
Ni-MH batteries are similar to Ni-Cd batteries, although they are less susceptible to the memory effect. They also have a higher capacity.
Lithium Ion
These are the latest type of batteries, and have no real problems as far as the memory effect is concerned. The problem with these is that they lose their effectiveness if overcharged or left for a long time with a full charge. Always discharge these batteries if you're going to be storing them away.
Keep Your Battery Healthy
Before the first use, charge the batteries for 12 hours or the minimum charge time, as mentioned in the manual.
For daily use, charge the battery to capacity, then run the laptop on battery power until it is completely drained (for Ni-Cd or Ni-MH batteries, this prevents the memory effect) or almost drained. (For Li-ion batteries, this can help prevent overcharging).
Don't leave your battery unused for long periods of time. Even if you use AC power most of the time, use the battery regularly to keep it in good condition. Switch off your AC adapter when the laptop is not in use. This prevents overcharging.
To extend battery life, you can try decreasing the LCD brightness while using your notebook. You can activate the `Standby' and `Hibernation' powersaving modes, too, for better battery life.
Battery Storage
If you do not use your laptop for extended periods of time-a week or more remove the battery pack from the laptop, but only after discharging it fully.
The batteries should be stored in a cool dry place, removed from heat, humidity and dust as well as metal objects.
Use A Laptop Case
It is advisable to spend a couple of thousand rupees and get a sturdy carry-case for your laptop.The case should ideally be hard from the outside and soft on the inside, while being a comfortable fit. It should be able to absorb shocks and carry your laptop accessories.
Keep Eatables Away
Obviously, no eating and drinking near or around your laptop. The least bit of water could short-circuit some sensitive laptop circuits, and render it useless.
No Hard Booting
You may sometimes be tempted to turn your laptop off by simply holding down the power button until it powers down. Although quick, this method is harmful to the laptop and could cause data loss.A hard reboot should only be used as a last resort. Sometimes this is inevitable, for instance, when Windows hangs. But this should not be a regular practice.
General Tips
Shortcuts To Success
Create shortcuts to your most commonly used applications, folders and files on the desktop. This way, you can access them quickly. If you like your desktop clutter-free, you can also create custom toolbars in Windows XP.To do this, right-click on the Windows taskbar, go to `Toolbars' and click `New Toolbar'. Next, choose the drive or folder you want to access using the toolbar. You can create different toolbars for different drives and folders.This is expecially useful for sales executives who want easy access to presentations, pro and other information they use on a day-to-day basis.
Clean up The Junk
Uninstall applications you don't use. Apart from saving on disk space, you'll also prevent your notebook from slowing down.Be resourceful-keep backups of the OS, drivers and commonly used applications on a secondary partition so you can do some reinstalling on your own if you face any issues when travelling. Carry driver CDs and recovery disks.
Laptop Security
Don't Be A Jerk
Don't subject your laptop to jerks and shocks. This will help avoid damage to your hard drive.Preferably, power the notebook off before moving it from one place to another.
Dusty Notebooks Don't Impress
Protect your laptop from dust. Ensure vents are clean to enable good air flow.
Drinks And Laptops A No-No
Don't place any containers filled with beverages (hot or cold) near your notebook, to prevent accidental spills.
Power Saving Tips
Let Power Be Managed By The Pros
Set the device to switch off the LCD screen, and hard drive after fixed intervals of time.
Disconnect
External peripherals and accessories such as external optical drives, PC cards and USB keyboard lights draw power from the notebook. Disconnect such devices when not in use.
Suspend Your Notebook
Booting the notebook when it is not connected to a power source draws a lot of power from the battery. Instead of shutting down your laptop in the middle of a meeting, choose the `Suspend' mode if you wish to use it again after just a short interval. This will save battery and help you restart your work faster
These weekly laptop maintenance tips will help you keep your data protected and safe while on the road. Companies with mobile professionals should consider making these tips part of their mobile work policies and check periodically that their mobile professionals are completing these maintenance tasks. For those who frequent hot spots, this is especially important. It takes only one mobile professional to be lax in their maintenance for a company to risk losing important data.
Anti-Virus Updates
Checking for virus’ on your laptop is probably the most important weekly maintenance task you should do. Even if you forget or don’t have time to do the rest – keep your anti-virus software up to date. Whether you are using a free or paid anti-virus program, you have to keep that program up to date in order for it to be effective. I normally run my anti-virus updates each Monday morning.
Just as you keep your anti-virus software up to date, you must also keep your firewall program up to date. Gone are the days when dial-up access users were safe from intrusions. Remember with your laptop that you are not only protecting personal data but corporate information as well. Mobile professionals may face more opportunities for unauthorized access just by virtue of the nature of their work; make sure you don’t become an easy target.
Back Up Data and Email
Backing-up your data and email on a weekly basis will help you ensure another layer of protection. There are plenty of external storage solutions which you can use to keep your information safe. If you lose your laptop or suffer a hard drive crash, knowing that you have a back-up made will make your working life much easier. I've heard countless tales of lost data and emails that were important and not recoverable. Save yourself the frustration by doing a weekly back-up.
Last Christmas Santa may have gifted you a new laptop or some laptop accessories, but most probably he did not tell you how to take care of it. So you need to have some top five laptop maintenance tips developed in your mind before you get yourself into trouble. Here are some of the top five laptop maintenance tips to keep your laptop running smoothly: One of the top five laptop maintenance tips is that you should never ever turn your laptop off with the power switch until windows has completely shut down. The only exception to this is when your laptop gets hanged and your hard drive is not running smoothly. If this is the situation, you can turn the power off without causing any harm to the hard drive. You should remember that cutting the power can also result in loss of data or windows files which can land you in trouble. You should remember that laptops are expensive gadgets facilitating the mobile users. Generally, they are very delicate so you just cannot mishandle them. If you end up messing your laptop, even the minutest of repairs will burn a big hole in your pocket by the excessive cash that you will end up spending. Secondly, since your laptop is one of the expensive gadgets that you possess, be extremely careful while cleaning the screen. Ensure that the cloth you are using is a soft one, and has no imprints or monograms on it, as these may scratch the screen. Also make sure that you are using lint-free cloth, else it will end up leaving fibres on the screen, and make the display not visible. Please be sure that you do not clean with a spray by directly pouring it on the screen .You should always spray onto the cleaning cloth then allow the cloth to wipe off the dirt and contaminants of the screen. This is one of the top five laptop maintenance tips. One of the top five laptop maintenance tips is also to ensure that you place your laptop properly. The Hard drives has the property of magnetic flux, so any electrical field may damage the hard disk and the data on it.
Always make sure that your laptop is at least at a distance of 13 cm away from any electrical appliance that generates a strong magnetic field for example the microwave oven. Fourthly if you need to shut down your laptop, then give it at least 30 seconds before you start it up again. This will ensure that the hard drive has spun down, and is not subjected to sudden switching on and off. The last but not the least the top five laptop maintenance tips is to always back up your data. The Laptops are mobile devices, and are susceptible to breakage. There is also a possibility that the hard disk simply crashes. Just remember you can never back up too frequently.
You must also take care of laptop batteries .You must go for batteries which have long lives. There are three main types of laptop batteries like Nickel-Cadmium (Ni-Cd),Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH),Lithium Ion (Li-ion) and Nickel-Cadmium. The batteries must be fully discharged and then fully recharged every few weeks. This gives a long life to the batteries due to the “memory effect”. The memory effect means your battery will only charge up to the percentage of the last charge. You should also remember that you should not eat nor drink near or around your laptop. Even a bit of water could be the cause of short-circuit. You may sometimes turn your laptop off by simply holding down the power button until it powers down. Though this is a quick method it is quite harmful for your laptop and can cause data loss. A hard reboot should only be used as a last resort. Always remember that downloading software and screen savers often create conflicts and use valuable memory. Laptop is a great mobile tool for accomplishing your task in an efficient manner and keeping it free of extras will let it work quicker with less of freezing. These are some of the laptop maintenance tips
Laptops are the small sized computers that are found to be portable. The usefulness of the laptops is felt in the contemporary age which is marked by the massive expansion of the information technology. The laptops are really expensive. Thus, the laptops need good care. Cleaning laptop is the primary requisite to keep the laptops in proper condition. As far as Cleaning Laptop is concerned, certain steps have to be followed in order to keep the computers clean. Certain things are needed for cleaning laptop. These things include cotton swabs, Compressed Air, soft cloth and a mixture of vinegar and water. Instead of the mixture of water and vinegar, you can also use laptop cleaning solutions. The blend of vinegar and water has proved to be extremely useful in cleaning laptop.
Before the cleaning of laptop, it is always recommended to read thorough the manual. It is by going through the manual that you will be able to know a lot regarding the cleaning of laptop. The use of harsh cleaning substances is thoroughly discouraged while making the laptop clean. Cleaning agents containing ammonia also should not be used to clean the laptops. Take proper care to eliminate the dirt that gets stuck in the inner portion of the laptops. Because these dirt and dust particles are often found to hinder the proper functioning of the fans inside the laptop. In order to clean the casing of the laptops, you can also make use of the damp cotton. But make sure that the cotton you use in cleaning the laptop casing is soft.
The compressed air is required for cleaning the cooling vents. After cleaning the vents, it is required to clean the I/O Ports. The cotton swabs are used to remove the large fragments of dirt gets accumulated in the laptop. One should always remain cautious that the dirt does not enter into the I/O Ports. There are certain other points that have to be thoroughly kept in mind while cleaning laptop. It is really needed to turn off the laptop before you start cleaning the laptop. Paper towels must not be used to while cleaning laptops. As a solution for cleaning laptops, you may also make use a mixture of water and alcohol. Ammonia based cleaning solutions are not to be used for the purpose of cleaning the laptops. Clean your laptop and ensure its longevity.
Laptop is a small mobile computer, which weights about 2-18 pounds or 1 to 6 kilograms depending on size, material and others factors. A laptop computer is smaller than a desktop. It has been unanimously accepted that the most significant advantage of a laptop over a desktop is that it is portable. But against this advatage there are a number of laptop disadvantages also. The first that heads the list is that it is expensive than a desktop. It is also slower than a desktop. Moreover, it cannot be upgraded as much as a desktop can. There are also certain other disadvantages like it quickly gets heated and the lifespan is relatively shorter. So against the more overwhelming advantage of being portable, it suffers from a bunch of laptop disadvantages also.Again it has been reported that one of the prime laptop disadvantages is the fact that it has a smaller disk storage than a desktop. The maximum disk storage of a laptop now is 120 GB.
Another important diadvantage is that it lasts for only 2 to 3 years if it is a good make and is used under average treatment. Laptops are generally more fragile than desktops. Even the life span of laptops is shorter than that of normal desktops. But the prime disadvantage of a laptop that is creating health hazards is that it is creating worse ergonomics, as the keyboard and the screen in not in the best place for wrists and eyes. So there a number of disadvantages to counter the single most advantage of a laptop. But the laptop proves to be a boon for the business travelers as they have to travel most of the time and also needs to carry the entire data with them.
Miscellaneous Laptop Facts
Planning to buy a laptop? Then you need to know about some of the miscellaneous laptop facts. Laptops have replaced the desktop computers and have gained ample popularity over the PCs by offering a number of advantages to its users. The most important advantage of laptop is its portability. You can carry your laptop to your office and can use it in your home. The portability factor has become a requirement for every individual. One major drawback of laptops is that it can not be easily upgraded. It is the main hindrance of buying a laptop. Technical as well as economic reasons make its upgradeability limited. The basic facts that you need to keep in mind while purchasing any laptop are its price, screen size, storage capacity, battery longevity and wireless connectivity. Read on to gather detailed idea on miscellaneous laptop facts. Important facts about laptops:
A laptop normally weighs between 2-18 pounds. The weight depends on on the size, material and on its specifications.
It functions with the help of a single battery. You can also use the AC or DC adepter to charge its battery.
A laptop features certain basic parts. It has a 12 inch display screen with a minimum resolutions of 1024X768 pixels. The internal hard disks of a laptop is usually 2.5 inches.
High end laptop models such as Dell Inspiron E1705 and E1505 offer graphics processor. The processor used in a laptop are offered by Intel. It include Celeron, Intel Core, Intel Core 2 and Pentium M. Other companies, which offer laptop processors are VIA Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
The touch pad or the pointing stick helps to control the cursor on the screen. The touch pad is very sensitive and you can navigate the cursor by using your finger. Pointing stick is another option. You can also use the optical mouse to navigate your cursor.
The nickel metal hydride technology has been replaced by lithium ion. The current laptop models use lithium polymer batteries.
Laptop accessories:The accessories which are available with a laptop include DVD and CD writer, printer, pen drive, carry case, headset, data card, webcam, speakers, . All these products can be bought separately. Companies offering Laptops:The prominent laptop manufacturing companies are IBM, Sony Vaio, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, Compaq, Samsung, Acer laptop and HCL. All these companies offer warranty for at least one year to the customers. Some companies such as Intel, Quanta, Asus and Compal Electronics have created a standard for all the laptop parts. Many companies offer you the option to buy laptops in installments. For further information about Miscellaneous Laptop Facts refer to our website laptopxl.com
Things to Remember Before Buying a Laptop Bag
Your laptop is a computing device, which makes most important tasks in your life easy and comfortable. Moreover, since this electronic device is a sensitive item, it needs to be protected from outer dangers. In order to secure laptops, the laptop bags are used that protects it from scratch and other hard substances. There are certain things to remember before buying a laptop bag. As the safety of a laptop is related to its bag, hence, you must assure that these bags are soft and waterproof. Today, laptops have become most important things just after the mobile phones. Therefore, laptop bags, like mobile cases have become some of the major aspects of fashion statement. Users of laptop bags range from students to the retired people. Hence, the patterns and styles of the laptop bags are not same for all. It is highly depended upon an individual’s choice. Hence, there are certain things to remember before you buy a laptop bag. A bag must have all the provisions to carry those items as well. So, everything needs to be judged according to your requirements.
Durability of the laptop bag is the most important feature, which needs to be judged. There are different materials used for these bags. Being waterproof is of utmost importance. This is because all the electronic gadgets are subjects to be harmed when exposed to water. Yet another thing that should be considered is the size of the laptop bag. This is reason that you should always measure the bag according to the size of your machine. You should ensure that the bag does not exert pressure on the laptop's surface. Weight of the laptop bag is also an important thing to be judged.
The anti-theft laptop bags are some of the most required ones throughout the world. Some of the known models in this field are Meshsafe m 100, Meshsafe m 200, Daysafe 200, Couriersafe 100, Commutasafe 100, and likewise. Some bags have alarming systems as well, which ensures further safety. The locks are made in such a way that no one will be able to open it except the owner.
Laptop Battery Basics
A laptop computer is a small mobile computer which usually weighs around 2-18 pounds, depending on size, materials, and several other factors. To take proper care of your computer ensures that the battery is safe and is ready to work when it is required urgently. Following the laptop battery basics or the tips the things to consider include the following:
Avoid extreme temperatures
Don’t leave a laptop outside in cold weather
Do not leave it inside a hot car
The cold batteries fail to create power while the hot batteries easily discharge. One must always use electrical power to keep the battery charged if available. You can also use electrical power for charging the batteries. Try to use the battery quite often and do not let your laptop go for long periods of time without using the battery. Following the laptop battery basics it is good to follow certain safety options: The smaller models are always handy. Hence, instead of going for a desktop replacement option, try to consider an ultraportable or thin-and-light laptop model. Usually the display of a smaller laptop uses less power. In smaller versions you can also opt for a hard drive that runs at 4200rpm and uses less power than a hard drive running at 5400rpm.
Before using the laptop turn down the lights and adjust the brightness a bit low. However, ensure that you can comfortably view the screen without putting pressure on your eyes. The color brightness can also be adjusted to suit the conditions of working. Power control is also one important laptop battery basics. Use less power by adjusting the laptop settings. Keep on using the power options to make the computer stop oeprating after a set amount of time. Properly set the adjustments so that at first the display goes off, then the hard drive stays active a bit longer and stores the system content’s into the RAM.
Always keep note on your battery consumption and also have the idea that how much power is left. For this you can use the battery power icon on the system tray or you can also buy batteries with little LED gauges on the outside of the battery itself. The battery should continuously be charged whenever you have access to a power source. If you are going for a long journey try to fully charge the battery especially if you don’t know where or when you might have access to any electrical outlets. Several other important laptop battery basics include the following important tips:
Get another Battery
Drain the Battery
Clean Batteries
Facts about CELLPHONE
Would you like to know if your mobile is original or not ?????
Press the following on your mobile *#06# and the-international mobile equipment identity number appears. Then check the 7th and 8th numbers:
Phone serial no.
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 02 or 20 this means your cell phone was assembled in Emirates which is very Bad quality
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 08 or 80 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Germany which is fair quality
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 01 or 10 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Finland which is very Good
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 00 this means your cell phone was manufactured in original factory which is the best Mobile Quality
*IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 13 this means your cell phone was assembled in Azerbaijan which is very Bad quality and also dangerous for your health
THINGS YOU NEVER K! NEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.
Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -
(1 ) EMERGENCY * The Emergency Number worldwide for **Mobile** is 112 ..* If you find yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. **Try it out.**
(2) Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have remote keys? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock.
Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor's Note: *It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!'*
(3) Hidden Battery power Imagine your cell battery is very low , you are expecting an important call and you don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time. AND
(4 ) How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone? To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 # A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. when your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
Press the following on your mobile *#06# and the-international mobile equipment identity number appears. Then check the 7th and 8th numbers:
Phone serial no.
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 02 or 20 this means your cell phone was assembled in Emirates which is very Bad quality
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 08 or 80 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Germany which is fair quality
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 01 or 10 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Finland which is very Good
* IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 00 this means your cell phone was manufactured in original factory which is the best Mobile Quality
*IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 13 this means your cell phone was assembled in Azerbaijan which is very Bad quality and also dangerous for your health
THINGS YOU NEVER K! NEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.
Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -
(1 ) EMERGENCY * The Emergency Number worldwide for **Mobile** is 112 ..* If you find yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. **Try it out.**
(2) Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have remote keys? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock.
Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor's Note: *It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!'*
(3) Hidden Battery power Imagine your cell battery is very low , you are expecting an important call and you don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell next time. AND
(4 ) How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone? To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 # A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. when your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.
COMPUTER ETHICS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
A very short history of computer ethics
‘A very short History of computer ethics’ was adapted from the article ‘From the internet’ by Terrell ward Bynum. Published in the summer 2000 issue of the American Philosophical Association’s newsletter on philosophy and computing. Terrell ward Bynum is professor of philosophy at southern Connecticut state university& visiting professor at De- mont fort university in Leicester (England).On the topic of computing and human values Dr. Bynum has published many articles & books. He organized conferences and work shops. He has given speeches, addresses and developed a website. In 1968 he created the scholarly journal ‘metaphilosoply’ which he edited for 25 years. He was co- creator and co – director of the ‘ethicomp’ series of international computer ethics conferences held in many countries.
Computer ethics as a field of study was founded by Norbert Wiener, a professor in the MIT. In 1940, while developing an anti-aircraft cannon capable of shooting down fast warplanes, he dealt with a new branch of science. The engineering challenge of developing a cannon which could track an airplane and calculate its likely trajectory and inform to another part of the cannon to fire shells caused Wiener and some of his colleagues to create a new branch of science. Wiener called this science of information feed back system as cybernetics. The concept of cybernetics, when combined with the digital computers led wiener to draw some remarkably insightful ethical conclusions. He foresaw revolutionary social and ethical consequences. In his book cybernetics : or control and communication in the animal and the machine, he pointed that we were in a position to construct artificial machines of high degree performance that was to say, that we were in the presence of another social potentiality for good and for evil.
Wiener published his monumental book “ The Human use of Human Being” which established him as the founder of computer ethics. It laid down a comprehensive computer ethics foundation which remains today a powerful basis for research and analysis in the field. According to wiener, the integration of computer technology into society would result in second industrial revolution, which affects every major aspect of life. Computer aided bank robberies and other crimes attracted the attention of Donn parker, who wrote books and articles on computer crime. He created a code of ethics for the members of the association for computing machinery. Also computer enabled invasions of privacy became a public worry and led to books, articles and government studies which proposed privacy legislation. Organizations of computer professionals also adapted codes of conduct for their members. Joseph weizenbaum,
a computer scientist in MIT, created a computer program called ‘ELIZA’, which provided automated psychotherapy. Concerned by the ethical implications, weizenbaum wrote the book ‘computer power and human reason’ which is now considered a classic in computer ethics.
Walter Maner, while teaching a medical ethics course, noticed the need for a separate branch of applied ethics which he named ‘computer’ ethics. Maner defined computer ethics as that branch of applied ethics which studies ethical problems aggravated transformed created by computer technology. He offered guidelines for dealing with the subject in the classroom in ‘A starter kit for teaching computer ethics’. Inspired by his work, Terrell ward Bynum not only developed curriculum material for a university course but also conducted essay competition to generate interest in computer ethics. James Moor, the winner of the essay competition, described computer ethics in his essay ‘ what is computer ethics ?’ He says that the computers provide us with new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action. Computer ethics includes consideration of both personal and social policies for the ethical use of computer technology. The year 1985 was a watershed year for computer ethics because Deborah Johnson published the first major text book in the field of computer ethics. In her book Johnson defined ethics as a field which examines new versions of standards and moral problems and moral dilemmas placed by computers. She forces us to apply ordinary moral norms. Johnson did not think like Maner that computer created wholly new ethical problems but rather gave a ‘new twist’ to already familiar issues such as ownership, power, privacy and responsibility. New university courses, research centres, articles and text books have appeared. A wide diversity of additional scholars and topics has involved. International conferences such as the ‘ethicomp’ series of conferences were being organized.
Gorniak has predicted that computer ethics, which is considered just as a branch of applied ethics will evolve into a new system of global ethics, applicable in every culture on earth. Computer ethics, then will become the ordinary ethics, of the information age. According to Johnson ethical theories and principles will remain the bedrock foundation of ethical thinking and analysis and the computer revolution will not lead to a revolution in ethics. At the dawn of the 21st century, the thinkers of computer ethics have offered the world two very different views. According to Wiener- Maner- Gorniak the revolution in computer technology may lead to revolution in ethics and forces human beings to reexamine the foundation in ethics and the very definition of a human life. Johnson believes that fundamental ethical theories will remain unaffected and computer ethics as a distinct branch of applied philosophy will ultimately disappear.
A very short history of computer ethics
‘A very short History of computer ethics’ was adapted from the article ‘From the internet’ by Terrell ward Bynum. Published in the summer 2000 issue of the American Philosophical Association’s newsletter on philosophy and computing. Terrell ward Bynum is professor of philosophy at southern Connecticut state university& visiting professor at De- mont fort university in Leicester (England).On the topic of computing and human values Dr. Bynum has published many articles & books. He organized conferences and work shops. He has given speeches, addresses and developed a website. In 1968 he created the scholarly journal ‘metaphilosoply’ which he edited for 25 years. He was co- creator and co – director of the ‘ethicomp’ series of international computer ethics conferences held in many countries.
Computer ethics as a field of study was founded by Norbert Wiener, a professor in the MIT. In 1940, while developing an anti-aircraft cannon capable of shooting down fast warplanes, he dealt with a new branch of science. The engineering challenge of developing a cannon which could track an airplane and calculate its likely trajectory and inform to another part of the cannon to fire shells caused Wiener and some of his colleagues to create a new branch of science. Wiener called this science of information feed back system as cybernetics. The concept of cybernetics, when combined with the digital computers led wiener to draw some remarkably insightful ethical conclusions. He foresaw revolutionary social and ethical consequences. In his book cybernetics : or control and communication in the animal and the machine, he pointed that we were in a position to construct artificial machines of high degree performance that was to say, that we were in the presence of another social potentiality for good and for evil.
Wiener published his monumental book “ The Human use of Human Being” which established him as the founder of computer ethics. It laid down a comprehensive computer ethics foundation which remains today a powerful basis for research and analysis in the field. According to wiener, the integration of computer technology into society would result in second industrial revolution, which affects every major aspect of life. Computer aided bank robberies and other crimes attracted the attention of Donn parker, who wrote books and articles on computer crime. He created a code of ethics for the members of the association for computing machinery. Also computer enabled invasions of privacy became a public worry and led to books, articles and government studies which proposed privacy legislation. Organizations of computer professionals also adapted codes of conduct for their members. Joseph weizenbaum,
a computer scientist in MIT, created a computer program called ‘ELIZA’, which provided automated psychotherapy. Concerned by the ethical implications, weizenbaum wrote the book ‘computer power and human reason’ which is now considered a classic in computer ethics.
Walter Maner, while teaching a medical ethics course, noticed the need for a separate branch of applied ethics which he named ‘computer’ ethics. Maner defined computer ethics as that branch of applied ethics which studies ethical problems aggravated transformed created by computer technology. He offered guidelines for dealing with the subject in the classroom in ‘A starter kit for teaching computer ethics’. Inspired by his work, Terrell ward Bynum not only developed curriculum material for a university course but also conducted essay competition to generate interest in computer ethics. James Moor, the winner of the essay competition, described computer ethics in his essay ‘ what is computer ethics ?’ He says that the computers provide us with new capabilities and these in turn give us new choices for action. Computer ethics includes consideration of both personal and social policies for the ethical use of computer technology. The year 1985 was a watershed year for computer ethics because Deborah Johnson published the first major text book in the field of computer ethics. In her book Johnson defined ethics as a field which examines new versions of standards and moral problems and moral dilemmas placed by computers. She forces us to apply ordinary moral norms. Johnson did not think like Maner that computer created wholly new ethical problems but rather gave a ‘new twist’ to already familiar issues such as ownership, power, privacy and responsibility. New university courses, research centres, articles and text books have appeared. A wide diversity of additional scholars and topics has involved. International conferences such as the ‘ethicomp’ series of conferences were being organized.
Gorniak has predicted that computer ethics, which is considered just as a branch of applied ethics will evolve into a new system of global ethics, applicable in every culture on earth. Computer ethics, then will become the ordinary ethics, of the information age. According to Johnson ethical theories and principles will remain the bedrock foundation of ethical thinking and analysis and the computer revolution will not lead to a revolution in ethics. At the dawn of the 21st century, the thinkers of computer ethics have offered the world two very different views. According to Wiener- Maner- Gorniak the revolution in computer technology may lead to revolution in ethics and forces human beings to reexamine the foundation in ethics and the very definition of a human life. Johnson believes that fundamental ethical theories will remain unaffected and computer ethics as a distinct branch of applied philosophy will ultimately disappear.
ASTRONOMY
ASTRONOMY
Unit I our picture of the universe
The lesson ‘Our picture of the universe’ has been adapted from Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief history of time’. It is the most popular book about ‘Cosmology’. More than 10 million copies have been sold. Even a film has been made on that book. stephen Hawking is one of the well known living scientists. At the age of twenty, he was diagnosed with a terrible disease ‘ALS’ (Amyo trophic lateral sclerosis).He was expected to live two years but with his strong will he completed his research and still he is alive .This lesson makes us think about some long-standing questions like whether the universe had the beginning and if so when? What is the nature of the time? And many more which doesn’t have an exact answer.
Our ancestors believed that the earth was a flat plate supported on the back of a gaint tortoise standing on an infinite tower of tortoises. In 340bc the greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book ‘on the heavens’, put forward two arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round which would be true only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions. Aristotle thought that the earth was stationary and the sun, the moon, the plants and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth. This idea was elaborated by Ptolemy in the second century AD into a complete cosmological model. The earth stood at the centre, surrounded by eight spheres that carried the moon, the sun, the stars, and the five planets known at that time: mercury, venus, mars Jupiter and Saturn.
In 1514 Nicholas copernicus proposed that the sun was stationary at the centre and the planets moved in circular orbits around the sun. In 1609 galileo found that several small satellites rotate around the planet Jupiter. This implied that the planets need not orbit directly around the earth as Aristotle and Ptolemy had thought. At the same time Johannes kepler had modified Copernicus theory and suggested that the planets moved not in circles but in ellipses. But he could not prove that the planets were made to orbit the sun by magnetic forces. In 1687, sir Issac Newton in his book ‘philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica’, postulated a law of vniversal gravitation according to which each body in the universe is attracted towards every other body by a force depending on their mass and distance between them. Also it is due to this gravitational force the earth and the planets follow elliptical paths around the sun.
According to Newton’s law of gravity the stars should attract each other and they may fall in at some points. But in an infinite space, if infinite stars are distributed uniformly, this would not happen because there is no central point for them to fall. When we consider a finite situation the stars fall in on each other. If we add additional stars outside this region, the extra stars would make no difference at all and would fall in just as fast. Also it is realized that it is impossible to have an infinite static model of the universe in which gravity is always attractive. Newton‘s theory of gravity is modified by making the gravitational force repulsive at very large distances. It allows an infinite distribution of stars to remain in equilibrium as the attractive forces are balanced by the repulsive forces.
In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the distant galaxies were moving rapidly from us. This implied that the universe is expanding. This means that at earlier times objects would have been closer together. Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. It may be supposed that time had a beginning at the big bang. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe. One could imagine that god created the universe at the instant of the big Bang.
Any physical theory is always provisional in the sense that is only a hypothesis. The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe. If everything in the universe depends on everything else in a fundamental way. It might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation even though these partial theories holds good in describing and predicting certain class of observations. Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories namely the general theory of relativity and Quantum mechanics. The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large- scale structure of the universe. Quantum mechanics deals with phenomena on extremely small scales such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other i.e. they both cannot be correct. One of the major endeavours in physics today is the search for a new theory that will incorporate both of them. It seems difficult to justify on practical grounds. But ever since the dawn of civilization, people’s desire for knowledge of the underlying order in the world is justified. We still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Our goal is to describe the universe we live in with the help of a complete unified theory.
Unit I our picture of the universe
The lesson ‘Our picture of the universe’ has been adapted from Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief history of time’. It is the most popular book about ‘Cosmology’. More than 10 million copies have been sold. Even a film has been made on that book. stephen Hawking is one of the well known living scientists. At the age of twenty, he was diagnosed with a terrible disease ‘ALS’ (Amyo trophic lateral sclerosis).He was expected to live two years but with his strong will he completed his research and still he is alive .This lesson makes us think about some long-standing questions like whether the universe had the beginning and if so when? What is the nature of the time? And many more which doesn’t have an exact answer.
Our ancestors believed that the earth was a flat plate supported on the back of a gaint tortoise standing on an infinite tower of tortoises. In 340bc the greek philosopher Aristotle, in his book ‘on the heavens’, put forward two arguments for believing that the earth was a round sphere rather than a flat plate. First, he realized that eclipses of the moon were caused by the earth coming between the sun and the moon. The earth’s shadow on the moon was always round which would be true only if the earth was spherical. Second, the Greeks knew from their travels that the North Star appeared lower in the sky when viewed in the south than it did in more northerly regions. Aristotle thought that the earth was stationary and the sun, the moon, the plants and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth. This idea was elaborated by Ptolemy in the second century AD into a complete cosmological model. The earth stood at the centre, surrounded by eight spheres that carried the moon, the sun, the stars, and the five planets known at that time: mercury, venus, mars Jupiter and Saturn.
In 1514 Nicholas copernicus proposed that the sun was stationary at the centre and the planets moved in circular orbits around the sun. In 1609 galileo found that several small satellites rotate around the planet Jupiter. This implied that the planets need not orbit directly around the earth as Aristotle and Ptolemy had thought. At the same time Johannes kepler had modified Copernicus theory and suggested that the planets moved not in circles but in ellipses. But he could not prove that the planets were made to orbit the sun by magnetic forces. In 1687, sir Issac Newton in his book ‘philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica’, postulated a law of vniversal gravitation according to which each body in the universe is attracted towards every other body by a force depending on their mass and distance between them. Also it is due to this gravitational force the earth and the planets follow elliptical paths around the sun.
According to Newton’s law of gravity the stars should attract each other and they may fall in at some points. But in an infinite space, if infinite stars are distributed uniformly, this would not happen because there is no central point for them to fall. When we consider a finite situation the stars fall in on each other. If we add additional stars outside this region, the extra stars would make no difference at all and would fall in just as fast. Also it is realized that it is impossible to have an infinite static model of the universe in which gravity is always attractive. Newton‘s theory of gravity is modified by making the gravitational force repulsive at very large distances. It allows an infinite distribution of stars to remain in equilibrium as the attractive forces are balanced by the repulsive forces.
In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the distant galaxies were moving rapidly from us. This implied that the universe is expanding. This means that at earlier times objects would have been closer together. Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. It may be supposed that time had a beginning at the big bang. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe. One could imagine that god created the universe at the instant of the big Bang.
Any physical theory is always provisional in the sense that is only a hypothesis. The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe. If everything in the universe depends on everything else in a fundamental way. It might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation even though these partial theories holds good in describing and predicting certain class of observations. Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories namely the general theory of relativity and Quantum mechanics. The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large- scale structure of the universe. Quantum mechanics deals with phenomena on extremely small scales such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other i.e. they both cannot be correct. One of the major endeavours in physics today is the search for a new theory that will incorporate both of them. It seems difficult to justify on practical grounds. But ever since the dawn of civilization, people’s desire for knowledge of the underlying order in the world is justified. We still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Our goal is to describe the universe we live in with the help of a complete unified theory.
HUMOUR JIST
H U M O U R
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman was born in Mysore in 1924.He began cartooning for the ‘free press journal’ in 1947.He joined ‘The Times of India’ as staff cartoonist and continued to draw for the news paper even today. .He has written and published numerous short stories and essays and travel articles. He has won numerous awards for his cartoons including Asia’s top journalism award ,Ramon Magsaysay award in 1984.In 2005 the government of India honored him with the Padma Visbhushan.
The present humorous story ‘The Gold Frame’ is also written by him. Datta, the owner of ‘the modern frame works’ ,is a silent and hard working man. His shop is actually an extra large wooden packing cage mounted on wobbly legs tucked in a gap between a drug store and a radio repair shop.Datta wears a silver rimmed glasses .He has a complexion of seasoned timber. He gives only laconic answers to the questions of his costumers and friends.
One day a customer came to his shop and showed a photograph which he wanted it to be framed. Datta with his habitual indifference ignored him. He continued with his routine work. The customer wanted a good job to be done no matter how much it costs. The customer volunteered the information and unwrapped a news paper. He exposed a sepia brown photograph of an old man. Datta felt that it was a standard portrait of a grand father, a philanthropist or a social worker of those days.
Datta asked the customer about the kind of frame he wanted for the picture. The customer wanted to have the best of its kind. Then Datta showed him different types of frames. The customer was baffled by the variety. Datta also showed him various mounts. He suggested that a cut mount with an oval shape would look more elegant. Finally the customer placed an order for a gold frame of a cut mount. Its cost was seventeen rupees. Datta asked him to come after two weeks.
Ten days later the tall, rustic- looking customer enquired Datta if the photograph had been framed. He thought that he could collect it if was ready. Datta cast a side glance at him and continued with his work. The customer realized that he had come four days earlier. He asked datta whether it would be ready by Tuesday. Datta generally do not execute the orders of his customers until they visit him at least twice as they never come punctually. Datta, realised that there would be trouble if he did not deliver the order on the promised date.
Next morning he made his first job keeping aside all others. He took the photograph and carefully placed it on a wooden plank on the floor. Then he looked for the pencil stub for marking the measurements. As usual it was missing he shook the folds of his dhoti so violently, that he upset a tin containing white enamel paint it fell right on the sacred photograph of the old great man, emptying its thick slimy contents on it.Datta stood stared at the disaster at his feet as if he had suddenly lost all faculty of movement. In his attempt to save the photograph he made a worse mess of it. He rubbed the picture so hard with a cloth that he peeled off thin strips of filmy coating from its surface. Datta sat helplessly with both hands clutching his head.
Datta had no idea of how to answer for the mutilated photograph. His imagination ran wild suggesting nightmarish consequences as the customer had a fanatic devotion to the photograph he accepted the situation with a hopeless resignation meanwhile an idea flashed in his mind. He searched all the unclaimed photographs to find a substitute for the photograph of the old man. He found a photograph which was a little bit yellowed. But the dazzling gold frame rendered it safe.
The customer turned up promptly after a couple of days. He was struck by its grandeur. Datta held his breath that in another moment he could betray the big hoax he had played. Angrily the customer questioned datta what he had done before he could open his mouth, the customer shouted, that he asked for a cut mount with an oval shape. But the mount was square in shape. Datta was relieved from his tension, as the customer concentrated more on the shape of the mount than on the photograph of the old man for whom he claimed to have a great devotion.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman was born in Mysore in 1924.He began cartooning for the ‘free press journal’ in 1947.He joined ‘The Times of India’ as staff cartoonist and continued to draw for the news paper even today. .He has written and published numerous short stories and essays and travel articles. He has won numerous awards for his cartoons including Asia’s top journalism award ,Ramon Magsaysay award in 1984.In 2005 the government of India honored him with the Padma Visbhushan.
The present humorous story ‘The Gold Frame’ is also written by him. Datta, the owner of ‘the modern frame works’ ,is a silent and hard working man. His shop is actually an extra large wooden packing cage mounted on wobbly legs tucked in a gap between a drug store and a radio repair shop.Datta wears a silver rimmed glasses .He has a complexion of seasoned timber. He gives only laconic answers to the questions of his costumers and friends.
One day a customer came to his shop and showed a photograph which he wanted it to be framed. Datta with his habitual indifference ignored him. He continued with his routine work. The customer wanted a good job to be done no matter how much it costs. The customer volunteered the information and unwrapped a news paper. He exposed a sepia brown photograph of an old man. Datta felt that it was a standard portrait of a grand father, a philanthropist or a social worker of those days.
Datta asked the customer about the kind of frame he wanted for the picture. The customer wanted to have the best of its kind. Then Datta showed him different types of frames. The customer was baffled by the variety. Datta also showed him various mounts. He suggested that a cut mount with an oval shape would look more elegant. Finally the customer placed an order for a gold frame of a cut mount. Its cost was seventeen rupees. Datta asked him to come after two weeks.
Ten days later the tall, rustic- looking customer enquired Datta if the photograph had been framed. He thought that he could collect it if was ready. Datta cast a side glance at him and continued with his work. The customer realized that he had come four days earlier. He asked datta whether it would be ready by Tuesday. Datta generally do not execute the orders of his customers until they visit him at least twice as they never come punctually. Datta, realised that there would be trouble if he did not deliver the order on the promised date.
Next morning he made his first job keeping aside all others. He took the photograph and carefully placed it on a wooden plank on the floor. Then he looked for the pencil stub for marking the measurements. As usual it was missing he shook the folds of his dhoti so violently, that he upset a tin containing white enamel paint it fell right on the sacred photograph of the old great man, emptying its thick slimy contents on it.Datta stood stared at the disaster at his feet as if he had suddenly lost all faculty of movement. In his attempt to save the photograph he made a worse mess of it. He rubbed the picture so hard with a cloth that he peeled off thin strips of filmy coating from its surface. Datta sat helplessly with both hands clutching his head.
Datta had no idea of how to answer for the mutilated photograph. His imagination ran wild suggesting nightmarish consequences as the customer had a fanatic devotion to the photograph he accepted the situation with a hopeless resignation meanwhile an idea flashed in his mind. He searched all the unclaimed photographs to find a substitute for the photograph of the old man. He found a photograph which was a little bit yellowed. But the dazzling gold frame rendered it safe.
The customer turned up promptly after a couple of days. He was struck by its grandeur. Datta held his breath that in another moment he could betray the big hoax he had played. Angrily the customer questioned datta what he had done before he could open his mouth, the customer shouted, that he asked for a cut mount with an oval shape. But the mount was square in shape. Datta was relieved from his tension, as the customer concentrated more on the shape of the mount than on the photograph of the old man for whom he claimed to have a great devotion.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
LAB 1 INTERNAL
English Language and Communication Skills Lab
BTECH Internal – I
Answer the Following Max. Marks: 10
Segment –I (5 M)
1) Write all the phonemic symbols of English language. (4 M)
(Or)
Write the rules of accentual pattern .
2) Write the phonetic transcription for the following words. (1 M)
1) Height 6) Neck
2) Believe 7) Touch
3) Bus 8) Boil
4) Yes 9) Rings
5) Blue 10)Shoe
Segment – II (5 M)
Oral presentation:
a) Dress code in colleges.
b) Education can de meaningful only when the syllabus is relevant to the job.
c) Computer and its influence on the society.
BTECH Internal – I
Answer the Following Max. Marks: 10
Segment –I (5 M)
1) Write all the phonemic symbols of English language. (4 M)
(Or)
Write the rules of accentual pattern .
2) Write the phonetic transcription for the following words. (1 M)
1) Height 6) Neck
2) Believe 7) Touch
3) Bus 8) Boil
4) Yes 9) Rings
5) Blue 10)Shoe
Segment – II (5 M)
Oral presentation:
a) Dress code in colleges.
b) Education can de meaningful only when the syllabus is relevant to the job.
c) Computer and its influence on the society.
LAB 1 INTERNAL
English Language and Communication Skills Lab
BTECH Internal – I
Answer the Following Max. Marks: 10
Segment –I (5 M)
1) Write all the phonemic symbols of English language. (4 M)
(Or)
Write the rules of accentual pattern .
2) Write the phonetic transcription for the following words. (1 M)
1) Height 6) Neck
2) Believe 7) Touch
3) Bus 8) Boil
4) Yes 9) Rings
5) Blue 10)Shoe
Segment – II (5 M)
Oral presentation:
a) Dress code in colleges.
b) Education can de meaningful only when the syllabus is relevant to the job.
c) Computer and its influence on the society.
BTECH Internal – I
Answer the Following Max. Marks: 10
Segment –I (5 M)
1) Write all the phonemic symbols of English language. (4 M)
(Or)
Write the rules of accentual pattern .
2) Write the phonetic transcription for the following words. (1 M)
1) Height 6) Neck
2) Believe 7) Touch
3) Bus 8) Boil
4) Yes 9) Rings
5) Blue 10)Shoe
Segment – II (5 M)
Oral presentation:
a) Dress code in colleges.
b) Education can de meaningful only when the syllabus is relevant to the job.
c) Computer and its influence on the society.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
ELCS LAB EXAM MODEL
English Language and Communication Skills External Labs
Max. Time: 3 Hrs Max. Marks: 50
SCHEME OF VALUATION
Total marks: 75
External lab: 50 M
Internal labs: 25 M
EXTERNAL LAB MARKS: 50
PHONETICS (language lab) : 15 M
COMM. SKILLS (Writing) : 10 M
PRESENTATION : 15 M
VIVA-VOCE : 10 M
TOTAL : 50 M
English Language and Communication Skills External Lab
Max. Time: 3 Hrs Max. Marks: 50
SECTION - I
PHONETICS:
1. Write a short note on vowels and the list of Phonemic symbols for Vowels. 10 M
2. List out all Phonemic symbols for consonants 10 M
3. Write any two words in phonetic transcription. 2 M
· Feed, Back, Thin
· Measure, Cow, Get
· June, Hand, Pay
· Five, Poor, Zoo
· Farm, Bird, Cup
· Then, Coin, Boot
· Ship, Ring, Put
· Dog, Chin, Hat
4. Write the word written in phonemic symbols in normal letters. 1 M
a) / pleijiŋ / ____________games.
b) /θiŋkiŋ/______________about something.
c) /ju:ziŋ/ ______________ a computer.
d) /siŋiŋ/ _______________ songs.
e) Ski /dз mp٨iŋ/ ____________.
f) Sun /beiðiŋ/ ______________.
5. Complete the word square to make four words underneath each one. SECTION – II
1. Group Discussion 1X10=10M
a) Dos and Don’ts of a group discussion.
b) Myths of group discussion
Topics for discussion
· It is important for all of us to have personal vision or a plan for every five years in our lives. (minimum 5 points)
· To achieve success as a team , its members must have mutual trust and also an equal degree of commitment
· Satellite technology has helped to make the world a smaller place
· What gives more happiness: health, wealth or fame?
· Who are the persons who most influence the shaping of an individual’s personality- friends, teachers or parents?
2. Situational Dialogue/ Role play 2X5=10M
WRITING
a) Barkha meets Farha, who used to be a classmate at school, after a long time at a wedding
b) Praveen forgets to wish her friend Anju on her birthday and calls her to apologise. Anju assures him that it is alright.
c) Mr. Nair goes to his neighbour, Shamim, to make a complaint.
d) Sudha does not make it to the university basketball team in spite of the months of hard work she has put in. her coach, Abraham, expresses his sympathy and consoles Sudha.
e) Kamala drops in at the local youth club to watch a group of young people rehearse for a play they plan to put up shortly.
f) Mr. Anand meets Amita, a student who lives in his neighborhood, at a book store. They have met before, but do not know each other very well
g) Mrs. Shakti Thomas walks up to Mr. Abay Sarkar, an employee in the bank where she was just started work.
h) Dr. Reta Rao and Mr. Salil Mohmmad meet for the first time at the work place of a common friend, Mrs. Padma Sree.
i) Kritika introduces her sister Alka to her classmate John.
Communication skills
· A dialogue between a Doctor & a patient
· A dialogue between a Principal & a Student
· A dialogue between a Customer & a Shopkeeper
· A dialogue between a Customer & a hotel receptionist
· A dialogue between two strangers traveling in a train
· A dialogue between a Customer & a salesman in a medical shop
· A dialogue between two friends at a party
· A dialogue between a passenger and the railway station master
· A dialogue between an officer and his sub-ordinate.
· A dialogue between the librarian and a student
· A dialogue between two friends in a marriage function.
3. Debate 1X10=10M
a) Arranged marriage is preferable to love marriage.
b) English should be made the medium of instruction.
c) Man is more responsible than woman for Dowry.
d) Women should have equal rights like men.
e) Managers are born, not trained.
f) Reservations in IIT` S.
g) Dress code in colleges.
h) Younger generation is more practical than the older generation
i) Teachers play a vital role in shaping an individual` s personality.
j) Wealth is the secret behind happiness.
4. Public Speaking 1X10=10M
Topics:
· Global warming
· Indian Cinema
· The Internet.
· Pollution
· Child Labour
· Unemployment
· Co-education
Viva-Voce
1X10=10M
Mock interview
· Tell me about yourself.
· What are your strengths and weaknesses?
· What are some of your out side achievements and interests?
· What are your hobbies?
· Why did you choose ----------specialization?
· Why are you not pursuing higher studies?
· What are your extracurricular activities?
· What are your long term plans?
· Describe your native place, college, family.
· What makes you very happy?
· What are your goals? Short term and long term.
· What do you like doing the most?
· What have been your major achievements?
· Describe your ideal working environment.
· What motivates you in the work environment?
· What frustrates you in the work environment?
· What would you bring to this position?
· How would you describe your own personality?
· What areas have you identified that you would like to improve on and what have you done about them?
· What are your career goals?
Max. Time: 3 Hrs Max. Marks: 50
SCHEME OF VALUATION
Total marks: 75
External lab: 50 M
Internal labs: 25 M
EXTERNAL LAB MARKS: 50
PHONETICS (language lab) : 15 M
COMM. SKILLS (Writing) : 10 M
PRESENTATION : 15 M
VIVA-VOCE : 10 M
TOTAL : 50 M
English Language and Communication Skills External Lab
Max. Time: 3 Hrs Max. Marks: 50
SECTION - I
PHONETICS:
1. Write a short note on vowels and the list of Phonemic symbols for Vowels. 10 M
2. List out all Phonemic symbols for consonants 10 M
3. Write any two words in phonetic transcription. 2 M
· Feed, Back, Thin
· Measure, Cow, Get
· June, Hand, Pay
· Five, Poor, Zoo
· Farm, Bird, Cup
· Then, Coin, Boot
· Ship, Ring, Put
· Dog, Chin, Hat
4. Write the word written in phonemic symbols in normal letters. 1 M
a) / pleijiŋ / ____________games.
b) /θiŋkiŋ/______________about something.
c) /ju:ziŋ/ ______________ a computer.
d) /siŋiŋ/ _______________ songs.
e) Ski /dз mp٨iŋ/ ____________.
f) Sun /beiðiŋ/ ______________.
5. Complete the word square to make four words underneath each one. SECTION – II
1. Group Discussion 1X10=10M
a) Dos and Don’ts of a group discussion.
b) Myths of group discussion
Topics for discussion
· It is important for all of us to have personal vision or a plan for every five years in our lives. (minimum 5 points)
· To achieve success as a team , its members must have mutual trust and also an equal degree of commitment
· Satellite technology has helped to make the world a smaller place
· What gives more happiness: health, wealth or fame?
· Who are the persons who most influence the shaping of an individual’s personality- friends, teachers or parents?
2. Situational Dialogue/ Role play 2X5=10M
WRITING
a) Barkha meets Farha, who used to be a classmate at school, after a long time at a wedding
b) Praveen forgets to wish her friend Anju on her birthday and calls her to apologise. Anju assures him that it is alright.
c) Mr. Nair goes to his neighbour, Shamim, to make a complaint.
d) Sudha does not make it to the university basketball team in spite of the months of hard work she has put in. her coach, Abraham, expresses his sympathy and consoles Sudha.
e) Kamala drops in at the local youth club to watch a group of young people rehearse for a play they plan to put up shortly.
f) Mr. Anand meets Amita, a student who lives in his neighborhood, at a book store. They have met before, but do not know each other very well
g) Mrs. Shakti Thomas walks up to Mr. Abay Sarkar, an employee in the bank where she was just started work.
h) Dr. Reta Rao and Mr. Salil Mohmmad meet for the first time at the work place of a common friend, Mrs. Padma Sree.
i) Kritika introduces her sister Alka to her classmate John.
Communication skills
· A dialogue between a Doctor & a patient
· A dialogue between a Principal & a Student
· A dialogue between a Customer & a Shopkeeper
· A dialogue between a Customer & a hotel receptionist
· A dialogue between two strangers traveling in a train
· A dialogue between a Customer & a salesman in a medical shop
· A dialogue between two friends at a party
· A dialogue between a passenger and the railway station master
· A dialogue between an officer and his sub-ordinate.
· A dialogue between the librarian and a student
· A dialogue between two friends in a marriage function.
3. Debate 1X10=10M
a) Arranged marriage is preferable to love marriage.
b) English should be made the medium of instruction.
c) Man is more responsible than woman for Dowry.
d) Women should have equal rights like men.
e) Managers are born, not trained.
f) Reservations in IIT` S.
g) Dress code in colleges.
h) Younger generation is more practical than the older generation
i) Teachers play a vital role in shaping an individual` s personality.
j) Wealth is the secret behind happiness.
4. Public Speaking 1X10=10M
Topics:
· Global warming
· Indian Cinema
· The Internet.
· Pollution
· Child Labour
· Unemployment
· Co-education
Viva-Voce
1X10=10M
Mock interview
· Tell me about yourself.
· What are your strengths and weaknesses?
· What are some of your out side achievements and interests?
· What are your hobbies?
· Why did you choose ----------specialization?
· Why are you not pursuing higher studies?
· What are your extracurricular activities?
· What are your long term plans?
· Describe your native place, college, family.
· What makes you very happy?
· What are your goals? Short term and long term.
· What do you like doing the most?
· What have been your major achievements?
· Describe your ideal working environment.
· What motivates you in the work environment?
· What frustrates you in the work environment?
· What would you bring to this position?
· How would you describe your own personality?
· What areas have you identified that you would like to improve on and what have you done about them?
· What are your career goals?
Intonation
Introducing letters and sounds
1) In this story, there are 12 incorrect words. The correct word is pronounced the same as the incorrect one, but the spelling is different. Correct them using words from the box.
Son some meat way threw pears sent week buy piece road two
week
Last weak, I cent my sun Jamie to the shops to bye sum food. He got a peace of meet and too pairs. On the weigh home, the bag broke. The food fell onto the rode and got dirty. In the end, Jamie through the food in the bin.
2) How many sounds are there in each word? Write the order of consonant sounds (C) and vowel sounds (V).
Example: Night cvc
(Three sounds: first a consonant, then a vowel and finally another consonant)
i. Dog ____________
ii. Rabbit ____________
iii. Frog ____________
iv. Gorilla ___________
v. Snake ____________
vi. Bee ____________
3) Read these names of cartoon animals. Do they have the same first sounds? (Write A) Do they rhyme (write B)
Example: Sam the Lamb B
a. Phil the fox _________
b. Mary the Canary _________
c. Ida the spider __________
d. Claire the bear __________
e. Polly the parrot __________
f. Deborah the zebra __________
g. Myrtle the turtle ____________
h. Kitty the cat ____________
4) Read the sounds. Do you have a similar sound in your language? If you
do, write a tick.
i. / ∫ / (shoe) _________
ii. / з: / (girl) ___________
iii. / æ / (hat) ___________
iv. / z / (zoo) ___________
v. / d / (June) ___________
vi. / ∂U / (soap) __________
vii. / θ / (thing) ___________
viii. / l / (life) ____________
The consonant sounds /b/ and /p/
1) First read this conversation to the end, and then write the letter ‘b’ or ‘p’ in each gap. Read and check your answers.
Sid: Where are the __p ears?
Joe: ___ears?!! Did you say ___ears?
Sid: No, ____ears, you know, fruit!
Joe: Oh, I see ____ears with a P! They are in the __ack.
Sid: What, in the ___ack of the truck?
Joe: No, in the ___ack, you know, with a P!
Sid: Oh, I see ____ack with a P! Would you like one?
Joe: No, I’ll have a ____each, please.
Sid: A beach?!!!
2) The word ape contains the two sounds /eI/ and /p/. If you reverse the sounds, you get the word pay /peI/. Reverse the sounds in these words
and write the new word.
Example: tops spot
1. peach ________
2. cab _________
3. lip __________
4. step __________
5. keeps _________
3) In one word in each group, the ‘b’ or ‘p’ is not pronounced. Circle the
word.
Example: double doubt Dublin
i) lamb lable climb
ii) crab robbed climb
iii) cup cupboard copy
iv) photo potato paper
v) recipe repeat receipt
vi) possibly psychology special
vii) Cambridge combine combing
Intonation
Voiced sounds are produced when the vocal cords are kept loosely together to vibrate. The vibration of the vocal cords produces a musical note called voice. During normal speech, for an adult male, the vocal cords vibrate between 80 and 120 times per second and between 150 to 200 times a second in the case of an adult female. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called the frequency of vibration and this determines the pitch of the voice. The more rapidly the vocal cords vibrate, the higher will be the pitch.
When we hear someone speak, we realize that he doesn’t always speak on the same note. We hear consonant vibrations in the level at which his voice is pitched. That is to say, sometimes the pitch rises and sometimes it falls. At other times, it remains level, high or low. The pattern of vibration of the pitch of the voice (i.e., the way in which the pitch varies) constitutes the intonation of a language.
A syllable on which a pitch change takes place is usually marked with one of the following signs.
1) [ \ ] the pitch falls from very high to very low
(The tone is called a high fall)
2) [ \ ] the pitch falls from mid to very low
(The tone is called a low fall)
3) [ / ] the pitch rises from very low to very high.
(The tone is called high rise)
4) [ / the pitch rises from low to mid.
(The tone is called low rise)
5) [ v ] the pitch falls from about mid to low and then
rises again to mid. (The tone is called fall-rise)
6) [ ^ ] the pitch rises from low to about mid and then
falls again to low. (The tone is called rise-fall)
An accented syllable can be said with a changing pitch or on a level pitch, high or low. If it is said on a high level pitch, it is marked [ ׀ ] with a vertical bar above and before the syllable. If it is said on a low level pitch, it is marked [ ׀ ] with a vertical bar below and before the syllable.
SYMBOLS
Ex:
1. I’ve ׀just ׀bought a \car. ([ \ ] - high falling tone)
2. ׀George is a \tall ׀boy ([ \ ] – high falling tone)
3. I trust you found him well ([ ] – low rising)
4. Did you say snake? ([ ] – high rising tone)
5. I saw it ten times. ([ ] – low falling tone)
6. The door is shut. ([ ] – falling rising tone)
7. I met him last night. ( [ ] –rising falling tone)
In the above examples, the syllables marked [ ] or [ ] are said on level tones, high and low respectively and the syllables marked with the sign [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] or [ ] are those during the pronunciation of which some sort of pitch movement takes place. A syllable which is said on a level tone, high or low, is said to have a ‘static tone’ and one on which there is a pitch change is said to have a ‘kinetic tone’.
To study English Intonation, one has to consider three important factors. They are:
a) The division of an utterance into groups.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement has to be initiated, and
c) The choice of a tone.
a) The division of an utterance into groups
We divide long utterances into small groups while speaking. In other words, we pause here and there in the middle of an utterance. The stretch of speech between any two pauses constitutes a group.
Ex:
Sentences without any pauses.
1. I’m going.
2. Can we go there?
3. Where do you think you are going?
Sentences divide into two groups. (So there will be one pause in the middle of each sentence)
1. When you go out, / shut the door.
2. If it rains, / stay back in the office.
3. Prices are coming down / inspite of the recent floods.
4. All those who have gone before you / have submitted to death.
5. When the cat is away/ the mice play.
Each group is called a breath group, indicating that the break up is physiological. We pause in the middle to breathe. These groups are also called sense-groups, as pause cannot be made at arbitrarily chosen places but it should be made in such a way that the sense of the utterances is not lost. These are also called tone- groups as each group forms a compact unit and must be said with a particular intonation.
Very often, punctuation gives a clue to the division of an utterance into tone groups, though it is not a sure guide. A full-stop always indicates the end of a tone group and a comma does it at times.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement
has to be initiated
Having divided an utterance into tone-groups, the speaker will have to choose a syllable, on which to initiate a pitch movement during speech. In connected speech as learnt, content words receive the accent and form words do not.
Ex: John and George are friends.
John, George and friends will receive the accent and and are will not. The speakers will decide on which of the three syllables John, George or friends to initiate the pitch movement. The syllable on which a pitch movement begins is called the nucleus of the tone group or the tonic syllable. Usually the choice of the nucleus will depend upon the meaning the speaker wants to convey.
Ex:
1. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( park – tonic)
2. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( walk – not to make the dog run)
3. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( dog – dog and not any other animal for a walk)
In the above sentences, prominence was given to all the content words and made one of the content words stand out from the rest by initiating a pitch movement.
4. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(You is the nucleus – the addressee but not anyone else)
5. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(I is the nucleus – he and no one else, is giving the order)
If the content does not demand that a particular syllable be made specially prominent, the last prominent syllable in a tone group will be the nucleus.
The first accented syllable in a tone-group is called the head, the most prominent syllable in a tone–group on which a pitch movement takes place is called the nucleus; the syllable between the head and the nucleus constitute the body of the tone-group, the syllables after the nucleus, if any, constitute the tail of the tone-group. The syllable before the first accented syllable, if any, constitutes the pre-head.
Ex:
Pre-head Head Body Nucleus Tail
1) It looks as if it’s rain now.
2) I’m going to mad ras to mor row.
3) - Go and get me some wa ter.
4) - Shut - up. -
5) That girl’s very beau tiful.
6) - - - Thanks -
7) It’s - - John. -
c) The choice of a tone
After dividing a sentence into tone-groups and having chosen the nucleus, the speaker has to choose one of the various tones.
Intonation in English serves a grammatical function and an attitudinal function. With the help of intonation the listeners can make out whether a particular utterance is a statement or question, a command or a request.
Examples
1) Looking for something (falling tone – a statement)
2) Looking for something? (Rising tone a question)
3) Going to Bom bay. (Falling tone – a statement)
4) Going to Bombay? ( Rising tone – a question)
5) Shut the door ( Falling tone – a command)
6) Shut the door. (Rising tone – a request)
Secondly, with the help of intonation one can find-out the attitude or mood of the speaker – whether he is bored, annoyed, interested in the subject of conversation, sarcastic, etc.
a) The falling tone may be used in
i. Ordinary statements made with no implication.
ii. Wh – questions asked neutrally.
iii. Commands.
iv. Exclamations.
b) The raising tone may be used in
i. Incomplete utterance, often the first of the two clauses in a complex statement.
ii. Yes/ No questions.
iii. Wh- questions asked in a warm, friendly way.
iv. Polite requests and encouraging invitations.
c) The falling – rising tone may be used in
i. Special implications not verbally expressed.
The intonation of a foreign language is an extremely difficult aspect of the language to master. From the numerous examples given in this chapter you may perhaps get a theoretical knowledge of English intonation. It is perhaps necessary to listen to a native speaker of English for a considerable length of time to gain mastery over this extremely complex aspect of spoken English.
1) In this story, there are 12 incorrect words. The correct word is pronounced the same as the incorrect one, but the spelling is different. Correct them using words from the box.
Son some meat way threw pears sent week buy piece road two
week
Last weak, I cent my sun Jamie to the shops to bye sum food. He got a peace of meet and too pairs. On the weigh home, the bag broke. The food fell onto the rode and got dirty. In the end, Jamie through the food in the bin.
2) How many sounds are there in each word? Write the order of consonant sounds (C) and vowel sounds (V).
Example: Night cvc
(Three sounds: first a consonant, then a vowel and finally another consonant)
i. Dog ____________
ii. Rabbit ____________
iii. Frog ____________
iv. Gorilla ___________
v. Snake ____________
vi. Bee ____________
3) Read these names of cartoon animals. Do they have the same first sounds? (Write A) Do they rhyme (write B)
Example: Sam the Lamb B
a. Phil the fox _________
b. Mary the Canary _________
c. Ida the spider __________
d. Claire the bear __________
e. Polly the parrot __________
f. Deborah the zebra __________
g. Myrtle the turtle ____________
h. Kitty the cat ____________
4) Read the sounds. Do you have a similar sound in your language? If you
do, write a tick.
i. / ∫ / (shoe) _________
ii. / з: / (girl) ___________
iii. / æ / (hat) ___________
iv. / z / (zoo) ___________
v. / d / (June) ___________
vi. / ∂U / (soap) __________
vii. / θ / (thing) ___________
viii. / l / (life) ____________
The consonant sounds /b/ and /p/
1) First read this conversation to the end, and then write the letter ‘b’ or ‘p’ in each gap. Read and check your answers.
Sid: Where are the __p ears?
Joe: ___ears?!! Did you say ___ears?
Sid: No, ____ears, you know, fruit!
Joe: Oh, I see ____ears with a P! They are in the __ack.
Sid: What, in the ___ack of the truck?
Joe: No, in the ___ack, you know, with a P!
Sid: Oh, I see ____ack with a P! Would you like one?
Joe: No, I’ll have a ____each, please.
Sid: A beach?!!!
2) The word ape contains the two sounds /eI/ and /p/. If you reverse the sounds, you get the word pay /peI/. Reverse the sounds in these words
and write the new word.
Example: tops spot
1. peach ________
2. cab _________
3. lip __________
4. step __________
5. keeps _________
3) In one word in each group, the ‘b’ or ‘p’ is not pronounced. Circle the
word.
Example: double doubt Dublin
i) lamb lable climb
ii) crab robbed climb
iii) cup cupboard copy
iv) photo potato paper
v) recipe repeat receipt
vi) possibly psychology special
vii) Cambridge combine combing
Intonation
Voiced sounds are produced when the vocal cords are kept loosely together to vibrate. The vibration of the vocal cords produces a musical note called voice. During normal speech, for an adult male, the vocal cords vibrate between 80 and 120 times per second and between 150 to 200 times a second in the case of an adult female. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called the frequency of vibration and this determines the pitch of the voice. The more rapidly the vocal cords vibrate, the higher will be the pitch.
When we hear someone speak, we realize that he doesn’t always speak on the same note. We hear consonant vibrations in the level at which his voice is pitched. That is to say, sometimes the pitch rises and sometimes it falls. At other times, it remains level, high or low. The pattern of vibration of the pitch of the voice (i.e., the way in which the pitch varies) constitutes the intonation of a language.
A syllable on which a pitch change takes place is usually marked with one of the following signs.
1) [ \ ] the pitch falls from very high to very low
(The tone is called a high fall)
2) [ \ ] the pitch falls from mid to very low
(The tone is called a low fall)
3) [ / ] the pitch rises from very low to very high.
(The tone is called high rise)
4) [ / the pitch rises from low to mid.
(The tone is called low rise)
5) [ v ] the pitch falls from about mid to low and then
rises again to mid. (The tone is called fall-rise)
6) [ ^ ] the pitch rises from low to about mid and then
falls again to low. (The tone is called rise-fall)
An accented syllable can be said with a changing pitch or on a level pitch, high or low. If it is said on a high level pitch, it is marked [ ׀ ] with a vertical bar above and before the syllable. If it is said on a low level pitch, it is marked [ ׀ ] with a vertical bar below and before the syllable.
SYMBOLS
Ex:
1. I’ve ׀just ׀bought a \car. ([ \ ] - high falling tone)
2. ׀George is a \tall ׀boy ([ \ ] – high falling tone)
3. I trust you found him well ([ ] – low rising)
4. Did you say snake? ([ ] – high rising tone)
5. I saw it ten times. ([ ] – low falling tone)
6. The door is shut. ([ ] – falling rising tone)
7. I met him last night. ( [ ] –rising falling tone)
In the above examples, the syllables marked [ ] or [ ] are said on level tones, high and low respectively and the syllables marked with the sign [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] or [ ] are those during the pronunciation of which some sort of pitch movement takes place. A syllable which is said on a level tone, high or low, is said to have a ‘static tone’ and one on which there is a pitch change is said to have a ‘kinetic tone’.
To study English Intonation, one has to consider three important factors. They are:
a) The division of an utterance into groups.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement has to be initiated, and
c) The choice of a tone.
a) The division of an utterance into groups
We divide long utterances into small groups while speaking. In other words, we pause here and there in the middle of an utterance. The stretch of speech between any two pauses constitutes a group.
Ex:
Sentences without any pauses.
1. I’m going.
2. Can we go there?
3. Where do you think you are going?
Sentences divide into two groups. (So there will be one pause in the middle of each sentence)
1. When you go out, / shut the door.
2. If it rains, / stay back in the office.
3. Prices are coming down / inspite of the recent floods.
4. All those who have gone before you / have submitted to death.
5. When the cat is away/ the mice play.
Each group is called a breath group, indicating that the break up is physiological. We pause in the middle to breathe. These groups are also called sense-groups, as pause cannot be made at arbitrarily chosen places but it should be made in such a way that the sense of the utterances is not lost. These are also called tone- groups as each group forms a compact unit and must be said with a particular intonation.
Very often, punctuation gives a clue to the division of an utterance into tone groups, though it is not a sure guide. A full-stop always indicates the end of a tone group and a comma does it at times.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement
has to be initiated
Having divided an utterance into tone-groups, the speaker will have to choose a syllable, on which to initiate a pitch movement during speech. In connected speech as learnt, content words receive the accent and form words do not.
Ex: John and George are friends.
John, George and friends will receive the accent and and are will not. The speakers will decide on which of the three syllables John, George or friends to initiate the pitch movement. The syllable on which a pitch movement begins is called the nucleus of the tone group or the tonic syllable. Usually the choice of the nucleus will depend upon the meaning the speaker wants to convey.
Ex:
1. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( park – tonic)
2. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( walk – not to make the dog run)
3. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( dog – dog and not any other animal for a walk)
In the above sentences, prominence was given to all the content words and made one of the content words stand out from the rest by initiating a pitch movement.
4. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(You is the nucleus – the addressee but not anyone else)
5. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(I is the nucleus – he and no one else, is giving the order)
If the content does not demand that a particular syllable be made specially prominent, the last prominent syllable in a tone group will be the nucleus.
The first accented syllable in a tone-group is called the head, the most prominent syllable in a tone–group on which a pitch movement takes place is called the nucleus; the syllable between the head and the nucleus constitute the body of the tone-group, the syllables after the nucleus, if any, constitute the tail of the tone-group. The syllable before the first accented syllable, if any, constitutes the pre-head.
Ex:
Pre-head Head Body Nucleus Tail
1) It looks as if it’s rain now.
2) I’m going to mad ras to mor row.
3) - Go and get me some wa ter.
4) - Shut - up. -
5) That girl’s very beau tiful.
6) - - - Thanks -
7) It’s - - John. -
c) The choice of a tone
After dividing a sentence into tone-groups and having chosen the nucleus, the speaker has to choose one of the various tones.
Intonation in English serves a grammatical function and an attitudinal function. With the help of intonation the listeners can make out whether a particular utterance is a statement or question, a command or a request.
Examples
1) Looking for something (falling tone – a statement)
2) Looking for something? (Rising tone a question)
3) Going to Bom bay. (Falling tone – a statement)
4) Going to Bombay? ( Rising tone – a question)
5) Shut the door ( Falling tone – a command)
6) Shut the door. (Rising tone – a request)
Secondly, with the help of intonation one can find-out the attitude or mood of the speaker – whether he is bored, annoyed, interested in the subject of conversation, sarcastic, etc.
a) The falling tone may be used in
i. Ordinary statements made with no implication.
ii. Wh – questions asked neutrally.
iii. Commands.
iv. Exclamations.
b) The raising tone may be used in
i. Incomplete utterance, often the first of the two clauses in a complex statement.
ii. Yes/ No questions.
iii. Wh- questions asked in a warm, friendly way.
iv. Polite requests and encouraging invitations.
c) The falling – rising tone may be used in
i. Special implications not verbally expressed.
The intonation of a foreign language is an extremely difficult aspect of the language to master. From the numerous examples given in this chapter you may perhaps get a theoretical knowledge of English intonation. It is perhaps necessary to listen to a native speaker of English for a considerable length of time to gain mastery over this extremely complex aspect of spoken English.
SYLLABLES
Syllables
Speech sounds are combined into syllables and syllables into words which are put together to form sentences. A syllable may consist of one phoneme, i.e. speech sound or more. But it does not have more than one vowel sound. A vowel sound, as a matter of fact, forms its nucleus. So a word has many syllables as there are vowel sounds in it. The structure of a syllable may be conveniently reduced to the following formula.
(Cn) +V+ (Cn)
where Cn stands for an indefinite number of consonants; V stands for a vowel sound and brackets indicate that the consonants are not obligatory.
A word is a linguistic entity composed of one or more phonemes. The words I, oh, consist of one phoneme each – the diphthong /ai/ and / u/ respectively. The words bee and saw have two phonemes each - /b/ and /i: / and /s/ and / / respectively. The word ‘strain’ /strein/ has only one syllable. Its structure is cccvc.
Ex: again; / gen/; -gen; v-cvc
Bold /b uld/; cvcc
Note: There are a few syllables which end in /l/, /m/ or /n/ and have no vowel sounds as nuclei; for example, the second syllable in the words ‘little’, ‘bottom’ & ‘mutton’. These are exceptions to the general rule indicated.
Ex: Monosyllabic words
I – diphthong /ai/
Oh – diphthong / /
Disyllabic
Bee - /b/ and /i:/
Saw - /s/ and / /
Trisyllabic
Cat - /k/, / æ / & /t/
Big - /b/, /i/ & /g/
Tetra
Crack - /k/, /r/, / æ / & /k/
Train - /t/, /r/, /ei/ & /n/
Poly
Blast - /b/, /l/, /a: /, /s/, /t/
Friend - /f/, /r/, /e/, /n/ and /d/
Word Accent
There are a number of words in every language which have more than one syllable. The English words tailor and teacher have two syllables each.
Not all syllables in an utterance in English are spoken with equal emphasis. In an English word of more than one syllable, one of the syllables is pronounced with greater prominence than the other (s). The syllable that is pronounced more prominently than the other(s) in the same word is said to be accented or to receive the accent.
Ex: Father / /, about / /
The greater prominence of a syllabic may be due to stress or greater breath force, but often the length of the vowel in a syllable, stress and pitch change work together to render a syllable more prominent than its neighboring syllables. In polysyllabic words, with several syllables, more than one syllable may be prominent.
For example, in the word ‘Examination’ / ig-zæ-mi-nei- ∫n/ which has five syllables, the syllable that has the minimum prominence is the fourth syllable /nei/, the syllable that has the next degree of prominence is the second syllable /z æ/; the other syllables /ig/, /mi/ & /∫n/ will be pronounced with less prominence than the two syllables listed above. Of these three syllables /ig/ will have the maximum prominence (but less than /nei/ and /zæe/) and /∫n/ the minimum prominence and /mi/ will have prominence in between these two. So this word has two prominent or strong syllables - /nei/ and /zæ/. Of these two, a listener will hear /nei/ as being more prominent because, apart of their syllable being articulated with greater breath force, there will be a pitch movement on this syllable. In a polysyllabic word the syllable on which a pitch movement takes place is said to receive ‘primary accent’ or ‘tonic accent’. Any other prominent syllable in the same word is said to receive ‘secondary accent’.
Different dictionaries mark word-accent in different ways. The method used in most modern books on linguistics and phonetics is the foll.
Primary accent is marked with a vertical bar ( ) above and in front of the syllable to which it refers. Secondary accent is marked with a vertical bar below and in front of the syllable to which it refers.
Ex: English word Phonetic transcription
Categorical / /
Comprehensible /
Conventionality /
Deposition /
Examination /
International /
Interpolation /
Notification /
1) What is more difficult for non-native speakers of English is to place the accent on the correct syllable(s) of a word. It is difficult to identify the syllable with greater prominence as accent in English word is both free and fixed. It is fixed in the sense the min accent always falls on a particular syllable (except in a few cases determined by the rhythmic pattern). It is free because it is not associated with a particular syllable of a word.
For example some disyllabic words receive accent on their first syllable ( teacher, wisdom, cancel) some other disyllabic words receive stress on their second syllable(be come, can teen, re mark)
Trisyllabic: advertise, anything, beautiful.
IInd syllable: a greement, ar tistic, de velop
IIIrd syllable: ciga rette, disap point, under stand
So a non native learner should learn which syllable of a polysyllabic word is accented by referring to a good dictionary.
II) There is a second difficulty about English word accent and this is owing to a shift in the accented syllable. In derivatives a shift in the accent is quite common. There are, no doubt, a number of words like a gree and a greement in which the derived word takes the accent on the same syllable as in the word from which it is derived.
1. a cademy (primary accent on IInd syllable)
aca demic (primary accent on third syllable)
acade mician (primary accent on fourth syllable)
2. advertise (primary accent on first syllable)
ad vertisement (primary accent on second syllable)
3. ex amine (primary accent on second syllable)
exami nee (primary accent on third syllable)
exami nation (primary accent on fourth syllable)
4. in ferior (primary accent on second syllable)
inferi ority (primary accent on fourth syllable)
5. photograph (primary accent on first syllable)
pho tographer(primary accent on second syllable)
photo graphic (primary accent on third syllable)
6. polotics (primary accent on first syllable)
po litical (primary accent on second syllable)
poli tician (primary accent on third syllable)
7. res ponsible (primary accent on second syllable)
response bility (primary accent on fourth syllable)
III) There is yet another aspect of English word – accent. There are a number of disyllabic words in English in which word – accent depends upon whether the words are used as nouns/adjectives or as verbs. If these words are used as nouns or adjectives, the accent is on the first syllable and if these are used as verbs, the accent is on the second syllable.
Word Noun/Adjective Verb
Absent / /
Contrast / /
Digest / /
Export / /
Import / /
Object / /
Perfect / /
There are words like limit, order, re mark, visit, etc. which are accented on the same syllable whether they are used as nouns or as verbs.
Accent In Compound Words
A compound word is composed of two separable words. The two words may or may not be hyphenated. In most compound words in English the primary accent falls on one of the two elements. The most common type in English is the first of the two elements receiving the primary accent.
Ex: air-raid
Bookshelf
Cardboard
Footprint
Rain-coat
School-bus
Tea-party
A few compound words with –ever and –self as the second elements in which the second element receives the primary accent.
Ex: her self, him self, my self, them selves, how ever,
what ever, when ever, who ever.
There are other compound words in which both the elements are accented, but the primary accent falls on the second element.
Ex: after- noon , home- made, post- graduate,
bad- tempered, country- house, good- looking ,
Vice- chancellor.
There are, however, a few useful rules for word-accentual patterns in English.
Rule 1:
Words with weak prefixes always take the accent on the root.
Ex: aboard /
Abroad /
Ahead /
Alone /
Because /
Become /
Below /
Beneath /
Rule 2:
The in-flexional suffixes –ed, -es and –ing do not affect the accent.
-ed: recom mend recom mened
re late re lated
so licit so licited
sub mit sub mitted
-es: com pose com poses
dis ease dis eases
focus focusses
suc cess suc cesses
-ing: ad vance ad vancing
com mit com mitting
happen happening
reason reasoning
Rule 3:
The derivational suffixes –age, -ance, -en, -er, -ess, -ful, -hood, -ice, -ish, -ive, -less, -ly, -ment, -ness, -or, -ship, -ter, -ure and –zen do not normally affect the accent.
For example,
-age carry carriage
cover coverage
hermit hermitage
marry marriage
-ance an noy an noyance
ap pear ap pearance
at tend at tendance
per form per formance
-en bright brighten
light lighten
-er at tend at tender
be gin be ginner
common commoner
per form per former
-ess cator actress
author authoress
con doctor con ductress
tiger tigress
Rule 4:
Words ending in –ion take the primary accent on the penultimate syllable. Here are a few examples:
admi ration falsifi cation
appli cation motion
combi nation nation
deco ration notion
de termi nation preparation
ex ami nation station
Rule 5:
Words ending in –ic, -ical, -ically, -ious, -ial and –ially take the primary accent on the syllable preceding the suffix.
For example:
-ic a polo getic
pa thetic
sympa thetic
ter rific
-ical bio logical
el ectrical
optical
psychol ogical
-ically chemically
eco nomically
psycho logically
sta tistically
-ious a trocious
cere monious
fal lacious
no torious
-ial com mercial
confi dential
dicta torial
me morial
-ially cate gorially
com merically
confi dentially
dra matically
Rule 6:
Words ending in –ity take the accent on the ante-penultimate syllable, or the third syllable from the end.
Ex:
a bility gene rosity
ca pacity magna nimity
elec tricity o pacity
e normity oppor tunity
fu tility ratio nality
ACCENT, RHYTHM AND INTONATION
In English connected speech we can find accentual features that are similar to the accentual features that of polysyllabic words said in isolation. In a polysyllabic word said in isolation, one syllable stands out from the rest
Ex: sub mit
The second syllable is more prominent than the first syllable. In a polysyllabic word two syllables, sometime stands out from the rest, one carrying primary or tonic accent and the other carrying secondary accent.
Ex: vari bility - varia à secondary accent
bility àprimary accent
Similary, in connected speech some words stand out from the rest which are marked with a vertical bar ( ).
Ex: He came.
Meet me at ten.
Buy me a pen.
I ran a race.
Turn to your right.
I want to buy a pen.
Sing a song.
Just as in the case of a polysyllabic word, how a syllable or two stand out from the rest, in connected speech, a word or two receives the primary/secondary accent. This is usually the last prominent syllable to receive the primary accent. Let us now rewrite the sentences listed above with both primary and secondary accent marked. Non-tonic accent is marked with the usual stress[ ] and tonic accent is marked with [ ] if the tone is falling and [ ] if the tone is rising.
Ex: He came (there is only one accented syllable and it automatically receives the tonic accent)
Meet me at ten.
Buy me a pen.
I ran a race.
Turn to your right.
I want to buy a pen.
Sing a song.
A word like examinative (5 syllables) will be pronounced e xami nation in isolation, with the syllables; æa and na standing out from the rest. Of these two syllables, will carry secondary accent and na will carry primary accent. Similarly, a sentence like ‘I want to buy a pen’ (which has 6 syllables – 6 words of which is monosyllabic) is pronounced with the syllables ‘want’ & ‘buy’ receive secondary accent and the syllable pen receives primary accent. So connected speech exhibits features of accent that are similar to the accentual features of polysyllabic words said in isolation.
In connected speech, only that syllable of a polysyllabic word is made prominent which is prominent when the word is pronounced in isolation. In other words, those syllables in a polysyllabic word that do not receive the accent when it is said in isolation do not have the potentiality of receiving the accent when it forms part of connected speech. The choice of the syllable receiving primary accent depends on the meaning the speaker wants to convey. In the first example He came or He came if the speaker wants to emphasize that the person referred to as he came and not any one else, he will then pronounce the word he with primary accent. Both He came and He, came are possible, but He came (with no accent on came) is not possible. A few sentences are given below with the appropriate stress marks.
Ex: I should go
I should go
I should go
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
This shows that the accentual patterns in connected speech are frees than those of individual words. In normal speech , content or lexical words are more likely to receive accent than form or grammatical words, content words are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, main verbs and demonstrative and interrogative pronouns. Form words are auxiliary or helping verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, personal pronouns and relative pronouns.
A very important point to remember is that English is said to have a stress-timed rhythm. This means that in an English utterance, the strong or prominent or accented syllables have the tendency to occur at regular intervals, of time, irrespective of the number of weak or unaccented syllables between any two accented syllables.
Ex: 1. Tom has just returned from London.
2. Gopal’s friend Patel received a prize from the president.
In Example 1 there is one unaccented syllable between any two accented syllables and therefore it is quite easy for a speaker to speak the sentence in such a way that the accented syllables Tom, just, turned and on occur at regular intervals. Same is the case with the second sentence.
In the sentence
My friend has arranged for my return trip.
Though there is no unaccented syllable between turn and trip. The time interval between ranged and turn ( 3 unaccented syllables in between) and turn & trip, will approximately the same. This is a very important feature of English connected speech and if this feature is neglected, the characteristic rhythm of English will be lost.
Another important aspect of English rhythm is weak forms. There are a number of words in English which have two or more qualitative and quantitative patterns depending upon whether they are accented or not. When they are pronounced in isolation, the strong forms of these words are used. When they are unaccented the weak forms of these sounds are used. The weak forms exhibit reductions of the length of sounds, weakening of the vowels in them and also in the elision of vowels and consonants.
Articles strong form weak form
Ex: a /ei/ /∂/
an /æn/ /∂n/
the /∂i/ /∂i/ before a vowel
/∂∂/ before a consonant
Auxiliary verbs
am /æm/ /∂m/, /m/
can /kæn/ /k∂n/ /kn/
do /du:/ /du/ /d∂/ /d/
has /hæz/ /h∂z/ /∂z/ /z/ /s/
us /iz/ /z/, /s/
must /m^st/ /m∂st/ /m∂s/
will /wil/ /l/
Conjunctions
and /ænd/ /∂nd/, /nd/ ;/ ∂n/, /n/
than /ðæn/ /ð∂n/,
but /b^t/ /b∂t/
Others
be /bi:/ /bi/
her /h∂:/ /h∂/, /∂:/, /∂/
sir /s∂:/ /s∂/
SITUATIONAL DIALOGUES
First, read the entire dialogue silently and understand the context in which the conversation has taken place. You will notice that each dialogue is marked by a particular approach to the topic under discussion and is characterized by either humour, persuasion, witticism, fun or satire. Some dialogues are merely on a matter of personal interest or family relationship. If you work entirely on your own, you will have to play the role of both the speakers. While practising, try to bring about the change in your intonation pattern required by each utterance. You should also attempt to capture the spirit of the dialogue to make it sound life-like. It would be ideal if one person played one role. This can easily be done in a group. Two participants can speak out the dialogues and the others present can listen to it carefully for discussion after the performance.
Dialogue I:
This is a dialogue between a college-going girl and her father. Notice how tactfully she is able to persuade him to permit her to join a historical tour. She demolishes his objections and lessens his fears with sound arguments and with her ability to present facts promptly and convincingly. While practising take special care to reflect the changed mood of her father towards the end.
Richa: Daddy today is the last date to pay up for the tour.
Daddy: So what? Didn’t I tell you last night you aren’t
going?
Richa: Daddy please do reconsider. All my friends and
class fellows are joining the tour.
Daddy: I can’t believe it; Mathur and Chopra will never
permit their daughters.
Richa: They have, Daddy, they have. Both Sweta and
Swati are going. You can check if you so wish.
Daddy: How big is the group? Is it a mixed lot?
Richa: It certainly is. But I’m not a kind any more.
Haven’t you told me an umpteen number of times that confidence and courage are essential for a successful life. Both these I have in plenty. Haven’t you trained me that way?
Daddy: O.K. O.K. Don’t lecture me. What’s the point in
wasting so much time and money anyway?
Richa: You have the wrong idea, Daddy. It’s a historical tour. And we are going during the Dussehra holidays. In about Rs.1750 we shall be visiting Agra, Gwalior, Jhansi, Lucknow and Delhi.
Daddy: Does this amount cover only travel expenses?
Richa: No, Daddy. Apart from travel it includes board and lodging charges. But why are you smiling? Don’t you believe me?
Daddy: Well, my child. Bring the purse from the drawer of my study table.
Richa: So sweet of you, Daddy. You are great!
Daddy: Here you are, count the money.
Richa: Thanks a lot, Daddy. I’m off to college now.
Dialogue 2:
Two friends, Ajay and Beenu, discuss the plan of the latter to go on a tour during the vacation. The discussion is matter of fact and as such you are not required to emphasize any point. However, do use the appropriate intonation pattern required by individual utterances.
Ajay: You have a log vacation ahead of you. Do you plan to travel?
Beenu: Yes, I thought this year I would take the family on a tour of the country.
Ajay: That’s a good idea. There’re many historical places that you should see.
Beenu: That’s what I thought too. You can read about them but surely there’s no substitute for seeing it with your own eyes.
Ajay: Where do you plan to go?
Beenu: Well, I thought we’d visit Agra first.
Ajay: That’s one of the oldest cities in the country, isn’t it?
Beenu: Yes, that’s what I have read in books.
Ajay: Well, I have been there. I’m sure you will like the place. You must go to Fatehpur Sikiri too.
Beenu: Thank you, I think we could manage it.
Ajay: Do you plan to visit any other place?
Beenu: No, I think Agra is as far as we can get this time.
Ajay: Well, goodbye. Have a nice trip.
Beenu: Thanks, goodbye.
Dialogue 3:
This is a conversation between two friends, Rahul
and Prakash, who are talking casually about their studies.
Prakash appears to be a little more serious about his studies.
In the middle of the dialogue the taunt by Rahul evokes an
aggressive response. However, the conversation ends on an
even note. Try to bring out the varying moods of the
participants when you speak.
Rahul: Why weren’t you at the party? I was expecting to see you there.
Prakash: I had planed to go, but had to study.
Rahul: How’re your studies coming along?
Prakash: Fairly well, I’m just beginning to release that I must study more if I wish to do well.
Rahul: Are you going to cinema on Saturday?
Prakash: If I’m through studying, I may.
Rahul: Is studying all you do?
Prakash: Just about. Last week I had to get ready for an exam. This weekend I have to get ready for another.
Rahul: When do you hope to finish your exams?
Prakash: I don’t know, really. If I’m lucky, I may get through in May.
Rahul: What do you plan to do after your Graduation?
Prakash: I have yet to make up my mind. I’ve got a couple of good offers.
Dialogue 4:
Two members of a club are planning to arrange a
picnic. They go into the details of arrangement. Mark how
the short remarks keep the conversation going in a pleasant
manner. You will also notice that some of the suggestions
are made in the form of questions. While practicing keep
these points in mind and keep your voice friendly and
informal.
Amar: The weather’s getting warm enough for picnics now.
Bhuvan: Why don’t we have one next Saturday?
Amar: O.K. Let’s make it a club picnic.
Bhuvan: No, I don’t think there’s enough money in the club account.
Amar: Won’t we have enough to buy cold drinks and ice-creams.
Bhuvan: Yes, we have got enough for them.
Amar: Well, then, let’s tell everyone to bring his own lunch. Cold drinks and the desert can be charged to club account.
Bhuvan: That’s a good idea. Then we won’t need committees either.
Amar: Now, let’s see. Doesn’t Hari have a Maruti van?
Bhuvan: Yes, he does. Shall we ask him to cart the cold drinks?
Amar: I don’t think he’d mind.
Bhuvan: Do you know a good place to go?
Amar: No, I don’t. I haven’t been on a picnic around here?
Bhuvan: Say, doesn’t that park down by the Blue Lake have benches and tables?
Amar: I think it does. That would be an ideal spot.
Bhuvan: And if it’s warm enough, we can go swimming.
Dialogue 5:
This dialogue takes place in a restaurant where
Babita has gone to dine. Note the extremely polite and
business- like tone of the bearer, Asim, and the authoritative
tone of Babita. Through a deft variation in his syntactical
patterns Asim is able to secure an order from Babita.
Asim: May, I take your order, madam?
Babita: Yes, I would like to order dinner now. I will have one plate of this special fried chicken and two chapaties.
Asim: Yes, madam, what vegetables would you prefer? You can pick out any two from this list here.
Babita: I think I’ll have fried potatoes and beans.
Asim: You also have a choice of soup or salad.
Babita: Is the vegetable soup prepared here, or is it out of a can?
Asim: This is our own recipe, madam.
Babita: Then I’ll take the vegetable soup.
Asim: What are you going to have to drink?
Babita: Coffee, please.
Asim: Will you have it with your dinner or with dessert?
Babita: With the dessert.
Asim: Would you like to order the dessert now?
Babita: I might as well. Ice-cream, please.
Asim: Yes, madam. Thank you.
Dialogue 6:
In this dialogue between a doctor and a patient,
notice how gradually and tactfully the former convinces the
latter on the need for healthy living and demolishes a
number of false notions he has. Try to capture the persuasive,
and yet, firm tone of doctor. Note how the confidence of the
patient, in what he thought to be right, gives way to a
receptive attitude. While practicing, reflect this change in
attitude.
Doctor: Well, Gopal. There is nothing seriously wrong with you physically. Basically you are fit, that’s what the reports show.
Gopal: Then why is it doctor that I’m always so tense?
Doctor: I think your condition has a lot to do with your way of life or habits.
Gopal: Way of life? Habits?
Doctor: Yes, now you tell me. You smoke, don’t you?
Gopal: I’m afraid I do, doctor.
Doctor: Rather heavily, I imagine.
Gopal: About fifty a day, I suppose.
Doctor: You should do your best to stop, you know.
Gopal: I’ve tried to give up smoking several times but it’s no good.
Doctor: Fifty a day is over doing it, you must admit. You must cut it down. I want you to make a real effort.
Gopal: Well, it’s easy to say give it up or cut it down but, you know how difficult it is.
Doctor: In my opinion you have no choice. Either you make a real effort or there’s no chance of your feeling better. I could prescribe a tranquillizer but would that help? I would like to see you normal again. And that’s why I want to know a few more things.
Gopal: Right, Sir.
Doctor: Your eating habits, for example. What do you normally eat during the day?
Gopal: I’m a good eater. At about 8:30 a.m. I eat a good breakfast.
Doctor: A good breakfast? What is it?
Gopal: Usually three or four stuffed parathas, washed down with a couple of cups of tea. I really enjoy my breakfast.
Doctor: I can see you do, but I’d advise you to eat much less. We’ll come to that later on. Go on.
Gopal: Before lunch, I have one or two samosas at about 11.00 a.m. and a cup of tea. I’ve so much work in the office that I begin to feel hungry at regular intervals.
Doctor: And then lunch?
Gopal: Around 1.15 p.m. Lunch has to be real quick because I’ve to reach office at 2.00 p.m. and I want 15 min for the newspaper.
Doctor: Try not to hurry through lunch.
Gopal: But I do make up for it in the evening. My dinner is rather heavy and I eat it leisurely. Most evenings I read a novel or listen to the radio.
Doctor: You do obviously enjoy your food. That’s fine. But I recommended that you eat less and healthy food. Instead of having that enormous breakfast, for example, take something lite – chapaties with salad and a cup of milk. And, no samosas at 11.00 a.m. A cup of tea should do.
Gopal: I see. But what about lunch?
Doctor: Eat your lunch leisurely. Remember that your health is at stake, not your job. After dinner, you should go for a walk. And have it a little early too.
Gopal: But, doctor, my wife is an expert at making parathas and pakauries.
Doctor: If you like, I’ll have a word with your wife.
Gopal: No. that won’t be necessary, doctor. Thanks very much. Bye.
Doctor: Bye.
Dialogue 7:
This is an informative conversation between a
doctor and his patient. The doctor in his conversation
unfolds the kinds of food essential for a healthy body. This
information is passed on in an informal, plain and jargon-
free language. You will notice that Jeevan’s tone is
inquisitive and the doctor is authoritative and definitive.
When you speak, try to reflect these tones in your speech.
Jeevan: Good evening, doctor.
Doctor: Good evening, Jeevan. What brings you to the hospital? What can I do for-you?
Jeevan: I’ve come for a medical check-up.
Doctor: What’s wrong with you?
Jeevan: I eat plenty of good food everyday but I still don’t feel strong and energetic and …..
Doctor: And at times you feel drained of al energy.
Jeevan: Yes. Exactly.
Doctor: What is your food intake like?
Jeevan: I eat bread, gram and meat and also fat in one form or another.
Doctor: This is the real cause of your bad health.
Jeevan: Why? Aren’t meat and gram good for health?
Doctor: Yes, they are. But they aren’t enough. Chemical analysis shows that meat and gram contain a lot of protein but don’t contain enough sugar or carbohydrates that give energy to the body.
Jeevan: Is sugar so necessary for good health?
Doctor: Yes, it is. It burns inside the body to give heat and energy.
Jeevan: But doesn’t fat give energy to the body?
Doctor: Yes, it does. But the digestion of fat takes much longer time and very often the excess energy is accumulated in the form of fat in various parts of the body.
Jeevan: So I should take a little bit of sugar everyday and that should keep me smart.
Doctor: No, I don’t mean that. That would be talking like a nineteenth century doctor.
Jeevan: Why? What was wrong with nineteenth century doctors?
Doctor: They believed that the body needed only three kinds of food – protein, fat and carbohydrate and they continued believing this until some one in 1910 did an experiment on rats.
Jeevan: That’s interesting. What was the experiment about?
Doctor: Chemically pure protein, carbohydrate and fat were fed to half a dozen adult rats for forty consecutive days and it was found that the rats actually lost their health instead of growing or even maintaining their health.
Jeevan: What did that experiment show? Did it show that the kind of food the rats were fed was harmful?
Doctor: No, it simply proved that the body needed something other than protein, fat and carbohydrate and that something was ‘vitamin’.
Jeevan: What odd people you doctors are. You do an experiment on the body of a rat and then at once apply your findings to the human body.
Doctor: Your comment is significant, Jeevan, I agree. But what is good for a rat’s body is usually good for the human body as well.
Jeevan: All right. In what form should I take these vitamins?
Doctor: Drink plenty of milk and eat vegetables which are rich in vitamins or take vitamins in the concentrated form and you will be al right.
Jeevan: Thank you. I must leave now. A few more patients are waiting outside. Good night.
Doctor: Good night.
Dialogue 8:
This is an informal conversation between Ganesh
and his son, Jogesh, on the subject of loud music. Ganesh
seems to be annoyed with the untimely and excessive use of
electronic media meant to inform and entertain. You will
note that he is not against these gadgets as such but
against their improper use. Your voice should reflect this
attitude of Ganesh. At places there are exclamatory remarks.
Be specially careful in articulating them.
Ganesh: There’s a dreadful din in Geeta’s bedroom, Jogesh.
What on earth is it?
Jogesh: Oh, she’s borrowed a record- player from one of her friends, papa and she’s trying out some of her latest records.
Ganesh: Does she have to have it on quite so loud? The whole house seems to be trembling with it. Anyway, why can’t she use our radiogram?
Jogesh: Ours isn’t any good, if you really want to hear the music. For one, it’s got such a small loudspeaker that only about half the notes are audible. And, we’ve been using it for years. It’s time we got a proper record-player, with bass and tremble controls.
Ganesh: That’d be a waste of money. We hardly ever use the gramophone and when we do, the quality seems perfectly alright to me.
Jogesh: That’s because you’ve got used to it. If we had a decent machine, we’d be able to play it more often. As it is, I wouldn’t risk playing my records on it.
Ganesh: Well, we’ll have to think about it. But shut the door, would you? It’ll keep some of the noise out. I thought I might look at the play on television. When does it come? Have you seen The Radio Times?
Jogesh: Yes, it’s on the stool by the fireplace. I’d been hoping to see the soccer international between India and Iran. It’s being played this evening. And I think it’s being televised.
Ganesh: That’s right from eight to nine. And the play begins at 9.15 after the news. You must as well switch it on now. You’ll catch the end of the football match.
Jogesh: The picture takes ages to come on in this set. Ah! At last! It’s not good, is it? It looks as though they’re playing in a fog. Shall I put the big light out?
Ganesh: Yes, just leave the little light on. That’s better. I think that’s as good a picture as you can hope for. I’m afraid the tube’s going.
Jogesh: What you ought to do is to hire a set. You pay a certain amount a month, and the firm guarantees to maintain the set for you.
Ganesh: No, I think I’d rather buy one. These, modern sets are pretty reliable. Hello! Someone’s scored a goal. Would that be India or Iran?
Intonation
[In the previous topic we discussed the vibration of the vocal cords.]
Voiced sounds are produced when the vocal cords are kept loosely together to vibrate. The vibration of the vocal cords produces a musical note called voice. During normal speech, for an adult male, the vocal cords vibrate between 80 and 120 times per second and between 150 to 200 times a second in the case of an adult female. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called the frequency of vibration and this determines the pitch of the voice. The more rapidly the vocal cords vibrate, the higher will be the pitch.
When we hear someone speak, we realize that he doesn’t always speak on the same note. We hear consonant vibrations in the level at which his voice is pitched. That is to say, sometimes the pitch rises and sometimes it falls. At other times, it remains level, high or low. The pattern of vibration of the pitch of the voice ( i.e., the way in which the pitch varies) constitute the intonation of a language.
A syllable on which a pitch change takes place is usually marked with one of the following signs.
1) [ ] the pitch falls from very high to very low
(the tone is called a high fall)
2) [ ] the pitch falls from mid to very low
( the tone is called a low fall)
3) [ ] the pitch rises from very low to very high.
(the tone is called high rise)
4) [ ] the pitch rises from low to mid.
(the tone is called low rise)
5) [ ] the pitch falls from about mid to low and then
rises again to mid. (the tone is called fall-rise)
6) [ ] the pitch rises from low to about mid and then
falls again to low. (the tone is called rise-fall)
An accented syllable can be said with a changing pitch or on a level pitch, high or low. If it is said on a high level pitch, it is marked [ ] with a vertical bar above and before the syllable. If it is said on a low level pitch, it is marked [ ] with a vertical bar below and before the syllable.
Ex:
1. I’ve just bought a car. ([ ] - high falling tone)
2. George is a tall boy ([ ] – high falling tone)
3. I trust you found him well ([ ] – low rising)
4. Did you say snake? ([ ] – high rising tone)
5. I saw it ten times. ([ ] – low falling tone)
6. The door is shut. ([ ] – falling rising tone)
7. I met him last night. ( [ ] –rising falling tone)
In the above examples, the syllables marked [ ] or [ ]
are said on level tones, high and low respectively and the syllables marked with the sign [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] or [ ] are those during the pronunciation of which some sort of pitch movement takes place. A syllable which is said on a level tone, high or low, is said to have a ‘static tone’ and one on which there is a pitch change is said to have a ‘kinetic tone’.
To study English Intonation, one has to consider
three important factors. They are:
a) The division of an utterance into groups.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement has to be initiated, and
c) The choice of a tone.
a) The division of an utterance into groups
We divide long utterances into small groups while speaking. In other words, we pause here and there in the middle of an utterance. The stretch of speech between any two pauses constitutes a group.
Ex:
Sentences without any pauses.
1. I’m going.
2. Can we go there?
3. Where do you think you are going?
Sentences divide into two groups. (So there will be one pause in the middle of each sentence)
1. When you go out, / shut the door.
2. If it rains, / stay back in the office.
3. Prices are coming down / inspite of the recent floods.
4. All those who have gone before you / have submitted to death.
5. When the cat is away/ the mice play.
Each group is called a breath group, indicating that the break up is physiological. We pause in the middle to breathe. These groups are also called sense-groups, as pause cannot be made at arbitrarily chosen places but it should be made in such a way that the sense of the utterances is not lost. These are also called tone- groups as each group forms a compact unit and must be said with a particular intonation.
Very often, punctuation gives a clue to the division of an utterance into tone groups, though it is not a sure guide. A full-stop always indicates the end of a tone group and a comma does it at times.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement
has to be initiated
Having divided an utterance into tone-groups, the speaker will have to choose a syllable, on which to initiate a pitch movement during speech. In connected speech as learnt, content words receive the accent and form words do not.
Ex: John and George are friends.
John, George and friends will receive the accent and and are will not. The speakers will decide on which of the three syllables John, George or friends to initiate the pitch movement. The syllable on which a pitch movement begins is called the nucleus of the tone group or the tonic syllable. Usually the choice of the nucleus will depend upon the meaning the speaker wants to convey.
Ex:
1. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( park – tonic)
2. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( walk – not to make the dog run)
3. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( dog – dog and not any other animal for a walk)
In the above sentences, prominence was given to all the content words and made one of the content words stand out from the rest by initiating a pitch movement.
4. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(You is the nucleus – the addressee but not anyone else)
5. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(I is the nucleus – he and no one else, is giving the order)
If the content does not demand that a particular syllable be made specially prominent, the last prominent syllable in a tone group will be the nucleus.
The first accented syllable in a tone-group is called the head, the most prominent syllable in a tone–group on which a pitch movement takes place is called the nucleus; the syllable between the head and the nucleus constitute the body of the tone-group, the syllables after the nucleus, if any, constitute the tail of the tone-group. The syllable before the first accented syllable, if any, constitutes the pre-head.
Ex:
Pre-head Head Body Nucleus Tail
1) It looks as if it’s rain now.
2) I’m going to mad ras to mor row.
3) - Go and get me some wa ter.
4) - Shut - up. -
5) That girl’s very beau tiful.
6) - - - Thanks -
7) It’s - - John. -
c) The choice of a tone
After dividing a sentence into tone-groups and having chosen the nucleus, the speaker has to choose one of the various tones.
Intonation in English serves a grammatical function and an attitudinal function. With the help of intonation the listeners can make out whether a particular utterance is a statement or question, a command or a request.
1) Looking for something (falling tone – a statement)
2) Looking for something? (Rising tone a question)
3) Going to Bom bay. (Falling tone – a statement)
4) Going to Bombay? ( Rising tone – a question)
5) Shut the door ( Falling tone – a command)
6) Shut the door. (Rising tone – a request)
Secondly, with the help of intonation one can find-
out the attitude or mood of the speaker – whether he is bored, annoyed, interested in the subject of conversation, sarcastic, etc.
a) The falling tone may be used in
i. Ordinary statements made with no implication.
ii. Wh – questions asked neutrally.
iii. Commands.
iv. Exclamations.
b) The raising tone may be used in
i. Incomplete utterance, often the first of the two clauses in a complex statement.
ii. Yes/ No questions.
iii. Wh- questions asked in a warm, friendly way.
iv. Polite requests and encouraging invitations.
c) The falling – rising tone may be used in
i. Special implications not verbally expressed.
The intonation of a foreign language is an
extremely difficult aspect of the language to master. From the numerous examples given in this chapter you may perhaps get a theoretical knowledge of English intonation. It is perhaps necessary to listen to a native speaker of English for a considerable length of time to gain mastery over this extremely complex aspect of spoken English.
Speech sounds are combined into syllables and syllables into words which are put together to form sentences. A syllable may consist of one phoneme, i.e. speech sound or more. But it does not have more than one vowel sound. A vowel sound, as a matter of fact, forms its nucleus. So a word has many syllables as there are vowel sounds in it. The structure of a syllable may be conveniently reduced to the following formula.
(Cn) +V+ (Cn)
where Cn stands for an indefinite number of consonants; V stands for a vowel sound and brackets indicate that the consonants are not obligatory.
A word is a linguistic entity composed of one or more phonemes. The words I, oh, consist of one phoneme each – the diphthong /ai/ and / u/ respectively. The words bee and saw have two phonemes each - /b/ and /i: / and /s/ and / / respectively. The word ‘strain’ /strein/ has only one syllable. Its structure is cccvc.
Ex: again; / gen/; -gen; v-cvc
Bold /b uld/; cvcc
Note: There are a few syllables which end in /l/, /m/ or /n/ and have no vowel sounds as nuclei; for example, the second syllable in the words ‘little’, ‘bottom’ & ‘mutton’. These are exceptions to the general rule indicated.
Ex: Monosyllabic words
I – diphthong /ai/
Oh – diphthong / /
Disyllabic
Bee - /b/ and /i:/
Saw - /s/ and / /
Trisyllabic
Cat - /k/, / æ / & /t/
Big - /b/, /i/ & /g/
Tetra
Crack - /k/, /r/, / æ / & /k/
Train - /t/, /r/, /ei/ & /n/
Poly
Blast - /b/, /l/, /a: /, /s/, /t/
Friend - /f/, /r/, /e/, /n/ and /d/
Word Accent
There are a number of words in every language which have more than one syllable. The English words tailor and teacher have two syllables each.
Not all syllables in an utterance in English are spoken with equal emphasis. In an English word of more than one syllable, one of the syllables is pronounced with greater prominence than the other (s). The syllable that is pronounced more prominently than the other(s) in the same word is said to be accented or to receive the accent.
Ex: Father / /, about / /
The greater prominence of a syllabic may be due to stress or greater breath force, but often the length of the vowel in a syllable, stress and pitch change work together to render a syllable more prominent than its neighboring syllables. In polysyllabic words, with several syllables, more than one syllable may be prominent.
For example, in the word ‘Examination’ / ig-zæ-mi-nei- ∫n/ which has five syllables, the syllable that has the minimum prominence is the fourth syllable /nei/, the syllable that has the next degree of prominence is the second syllable /z æ/; the other syllables /ig/, /mi/ & /∫n/ will be pronounced with less prominence than the two syllables listed above. Of these three syllables /ig/ will have the maximum prominence (but less than /nei/ and /zæe/) and /∫n/ the minimum prominence and /mi/ will have prominence in between these two. So this word has two prominent or strong syllables - /nei/ and /zæ/. Of these two, a listener will hear /nei/ as being more prominent because, apart of their syllable being articulated with greater breath force, there will be a pitch movement on this syllable. In a polysyllabic word the syllable on which a pitch movement takes place is said to receive ‘primary accent’ or ‘tonic accent’. Any other prominent syllable in the same word is said to receive ‘secondary accent’.
Different dictionaries mark word-accent in different ways. The method used in most modern books on linguistics and phonetics is the foll.
Primary accent is marked with a vertical bar ( ) above and in front of the syllable to which it refers. Secondary accent is marked with a vertical bar below and in front of the syllable to which it refers.
Ex: English word Phonetic transcription
Categorical / /
Comprehensible /
Conventionality /
Deposition /
Examination /
International /
Interpolation /
Notification /
1) What is more difficult for non-native speakers of English is to place the accent on the correct syllable(s) of a word. It is difficult to identify the syllable with greater prominence as accent in English word is both free and fixed. It is fixed in the sense the min accent always falls on a particular syllable (except in a few cases determined by the rhythmic pattern). It is free because it is not associated with a particular syllable of a word.
For example some disyllabic words receive accent on their first syllable ( teacher, wisdom, cancel) some other disyllabic words receive stress on their second syllable(be come, can teen, re mark)
Trisyllabic: advertise, anything, beautiful.
IInd syllable: a greement, ar tistic, de velop
IIIrd syllable: ciga rette, disap point, under stand
So a non native learner should learn which syllable of a polysyllabic word is accented by referring to a good dictionary.
II) There is a second difficulty about English word accent and this is owing to a shift in the accented syllable. In derivatives a shift in the accent is quite common. There are, no doubt, a number of words like a gree and a greement in which the derived word takes the accent on the same syllable as in the word from which it is derived.
1. a cademy (primary accent on IInd syllable)
aca demic (primary accent on third syllable)
acade mician (primary accent on fourth syllable)
2. advertise (primary accent on first syllable)
ad vertisement (primary accent on second syllable)
3. ex amine (primary accent on second syllable)
exami nee (primary accent on third syllable)
exami nation (primary accent on fourth syllable)
4. in ferior (primary accent on second syllable)
inferi ority (primary accent on fourth syllable)
5. photograph (primary accent on first syllable)
pho tographer(primary accent on second syllable)
photo graphic (primary accent on third syllable)
6. polotics (primary accent on first syllable)
po litical (primary accent on second syllable)
poli tician (primary accent on third syllable)
7. res ponsible (primary accent on second syllable)
response bility (primary accent on fourth syllable)
III) There is yet another aspect of English word – accent. There are a number of disyllabic words in English in which word – accent depends upon whether the words are used as nouns/adjectives or as verbs. If these words are used as nouns or adjectives, the accent is on the first syllable and if these are used as verbs, the accent is on the second syllable.
Word Noun/Adjective Verb
Absent / /
Contrast / /
Digest / /
Export / /
Import / /
Object / /
Perfect / /
There are words like limit, order, re mark, visit, etc. which are accented on the same syllable whether they are used as nouns or as verbs.
Accent In Compound Words
A compound word is composed of two separable words. The two words may or may not be hyphenated. In most compound words in English the primary accent falls on one of the two elements. The most common type in English is the first of the two elements receiving the primary accent.
Ex: air-raid
Bookshelf
Cardboard
Footprint
Rain-coat
School-bus
Tea-party
A few compound words with –ever and –self as the second elements in which the second element receives the primary accent.
Ex: her self, him self, my self, them selves, how ever,
what ever, when ever, who ever.
There are other compound words in which both the elements are accented, but the primary accent falls on the second element.
Ex: after- noon , home- made, post- graduate,
bad- tempered, country- house, good- looking ,
Vice- chancellor.
There are, however, a few useful rules for word-accentual patterns in English.
Rule 1:
Words with weak prefixes always take the accent on the root.
Ex: aboard /
Abroad /
Ahead /
Alone /
Because /
Become /
Below /
Beneath /
Rule 2:
The in-flexional suffixes –ed, -es and –ing do not affect the accent.
-ed: recom mend recom mened
re late re lated
so licit so licited
sub mit sub mitted
-es: com pose com poses
dis ease dis eases
focus focusses
suc cess suc cesses
-ing: ad vance ad vancing
com mit com mitting
happen happening
reason reasoning
Rule 3:
The derivational suffixes –age, -ance, -en, -er, -ess, -ful, -hood, -ice, -ish, -ive, -less, -ly, -ment, -ness, -or, -ship, -ter, -ure and –zen do not normally affect the accent.
For example,
-age carry carriage
cover coverage
hermit hermitage
marry marriage
-ance an noy an noyance
ap pear ap pearance
at tend at tendance
per form per formance
-en bright brighten
light lighten
-er at tend at tender
be gin be ginner
common commoner
per form per former
-ess cator actress
author authoress
con doctor con ductress
tiger tigress
Rule 4:
Words ending in –ion take the primary accent on the penultimate syllable. Here are a few examples:
admi ration falsifi cation
appli cation motion
combi nation nation
deco ration notion
de termi nation preparation
ex ami nation station
Rule 5:
Words ending in –ic, -ical, -ically, -ious, -ial and –ially take the primary accent on the syllable preceding the suffix.
For example:
-ic a polo getic
pa thetic
sympa thetic
ter rific
-ical bio logical
el ectrical
optical
psychol ogical
-ically chemically
eco nomically
psycho logically
sta tistically
-ious a trocious
cere monious
fal lacious
no torious
-ial com mercial
confi dential
dicta torial
me morial
-ially cate gorially
com merically
confi dentially
dra matically
Rule 6:
Words ending in –ity take the accent on the ante-penultimate syllable, or the third syllable from the end.
Ex:
a bility gene rosity
ca pacity magna nimity
elec tricity o pacity
e normity oppor tunity
fu tility ratio nality
ACCENT, RHYTHM AND INTONATION
In English connected speech we can find accentual features that are similar to the accentual features that of polysyllabic words said in isolation. In a polysyllabic word said in isolation, one syllable stands out from the rest
Ex: sub mit
The second syllable is more prominent than the first syllable. In a polysyllabic word two syllables, sometime stands out from the rest, one carrying primary or tonic accent and the other carrying secondary accent.
Ex: vari bility - varia à secondary accent
bility àprimary accent
Similary, in connected speech some words stand out from the rest which are marked with a vertical bar ( ).
Ex: He came.
Meet me at ten.
Buy me a pen.
I ran a race.
Turn to your right.
I want to buy a pen.
Sing a song.
Just as in the case of a polysyllabic word, how a syllable or two stand out from the rest, in connected speech, a word or two receives the primary/secondary accent. This is usually the last prominent syllable to receive the primary accent. Let us now rewrite the sentences listed above with both primary and secondary accent marked. Non-tonic accent is marked with the usual stress[ ] and tonic accent is marked with [ ] if the tone is falling and [ ] if the tone is rising.
Ex: He came (there is only one accented syllable and it automatically receives the tonic accent)
Meet me at ten.
Buy me a pen.
I ran a race.
Turn to your right.
I want to buy a pen.
Sing a song.
A word like examinative (5 syllables) will be pronounced e xami nation in isolation, with the syllables; æa and na standing out from the rest. Of these two syllables, will carry secondary accent and na will carry primary accent. Similarly, a sentence like ‘I want to buy a pen’ (which has 6 syllables – 6 words of which is monosyllabic) is pronounced with the syllables ‘want’ & ‘buy’ receive secondary accent and the syllable pen receives primary accent. So connected speech exhibits features of accent that are similar to the accentual features of polysyllabic words said in isolation.
In connected speech, only that syllable of a polysyllabic word is made prominent which is prominent when the word is pronounced in isolation. In other words, those syllables in a polysyllabic word that do not receive the accent when it is said in isolation do not have the potentiality of receiving the accent when it forms part of connected speech. The choice of the syllable receiving primary accent depends on the meaning the speaker wants to convey. In the first example He came or He came if the speaker wants to emphasize that the person referred to as he came and not any one else, he will then pronounce the word he with primary accent. Both He came and He, came are possible, but He came (with no accent on came) is not possible. A few sentences are given below with the appropriate stress marks.
Ex: I should go
I should go
I should go
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
This shows that the accentual patterns in connected speech are frees than those of individual words. In normal speech , content or lexical words are more likely to receive accent than form or grammatical words, content words are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, main verbs and demonstrative and interrogative pronouns. Form words are auxiliary or helping verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, personal pronouns and relative pronouns.
A very important point to remember is that English is said to have a stress-timed rhythm. This means that in an English utterance, the strong or prominent or accented syllables have the tendency to occur at regular intervals, of time, irrespective of the number of weak or unaccented syllables between any two accented syllables.
Ex: 1. Tom has just returned from London.
2. Gopal’s friend Patel received a prize from the president.
In Example 1 there is one unaccented syllable between any two accented syllables and therefore it is quite easy for a speaker to speak the sentence in such a way that the accented syllables Tom, just, turned and on occur at regular intervals. Same is the case with the second sentence.
In the sentence
My friend has arranged for my return trip.
Though there is no unaccented syllable between turn and trip. The time interval between ranged and turn ( 3 unaccented syllables in between) and turn & trip, will approximately the same. This is a very important feature of English connected speech and if this feature is neglected, the characteristic rhythm of English will be lost.
Another important aspect of English rhythm is weak forms. There are a number of words in English which have two or more qualitative and quantitative patterns depending upon whether they are accented or not. When they are pronounced in isolation, the strong forms of these words are used. When they are unaccented the weak forms of these sounds are used. The weak forms exhibit reductions of the length of sounds, weakening of the vowels in them and also in the elision of vowels and consonants.
Articles strong form weak form
Ex: a /ei/ /∂/
an /æn/ /∂n/
the /∂i/ /∂i/ before a vowel
/∂∂/ before a consonant
Auxiliary verbs
am /æm/ /∂m/, /m/
can /kæn/ /k∂n/ /kn/
do /du:/ /du/ /d∂/ /d/
has /hæz/ /h∂z/ /∂z/ /z/ /s/
us /iz/ /z/, /s/
must /m^st/ /m∂st/ /m∂s/
will /wil/ /l/
Conjunctions
and /ænd/ /∂nd/, /nd/ ;/ ∂n/, /n/
than /ðæn/ /ð∂n/,
but /b^t/ /b∂t/
Others
be /bi:/ /bi/
her /h∂:/ /h∂/, /∂:/, /∂/
sir /s∂:/ /s∂/
SITUATIONAL DIALOGUES
First, read the entire dialogue silently and understand the context in which the conversation has taken place. You will notice that each dialogue is marked by a particular approach to the topic under discussion and is characterized by either humour, persuasion, witticism, fun or satire. Some dialogues are merely on a matter of personal interest or family relationship. If you work entirely on your own, you will have to play the role of both the speakers. While practising, try to bring about the change in your intonation pattern required by each utterance. You should also attempt to capture the spirit of the dialogue to make it sound life-like. It would be ideal if one person played one role. This can easily be done in a group. Two participants can speak out the dialogues and the others present can listen to it carefully for discussion after the performance.
Dialogue I:
This is a dialogue between a college-going girl and her father. Notice how tactfully she is able to persuade him to permit her to join a historical tour. She demolishes his objections and lessens his fears with sound arguments and with her ability to present facts promptly and convincingly. While practising take special care to reflect the changed mood of her father towards the end.
Richa: Daddy today is the last date to pay up for the tour.
Daddy: So what? Didn’t I tell you last night you aren’t
going?
Richa: Daddy please do reconsider. All my friends and
class fellows are joining the tour.
Daddy: I can’t believe it; Mathur and Chopra will never
permit their daughters.
Richa: They have, Daddy, they have. Both Sweta and
Swati are going. You can check if you so wish.
Daddy: How big is the group? Is it a mixed lot?
Richa: It certainly is. But I’m not a kind any more.
Haven’t you told me an umpteen number of times that confidence and courage are essential for a successful life. Both these I have in plenty. Haven’t you trained me that way?
Daddy: O.K. O.K. Don’t lecture me. What’s the point in
wasting so much time and money anyway?
Richa: You have the wrong idea, Daddy. It’s a historical tour. And we are going during the Dussehra holidays. In about Rs.1750 we shall be visiting Agra, Gwalior, Jhansi, Lucknow and Delhi.
Daddy: Does this amount cover only travel expenses?
Richa: No, Daddy. Apart from travel it includes board and lodging charges. But why are you smiling? Don’t you believe me?
Daddy: Well, my child. Bring the purse from the drawer of my study table.
Richa: So sweet of you, Daddy. You are great!
Daddy: Here you are, count the money.
Richa: Thanks a lot, Daddy. I’m off to college now.
Dialogue 2:
Two friends, Ajay and Beenu, discuss the plan of the latter to go on a tour during the vacation. The discussion is matter of fact and as such you are not required to emphasize any point. However, do use the appropriate intonation pattern required by individual utterances.
Ajay: You have a log vacation ahead of you. Do you plan to travel?
Beenu: Yes, I thought this year I would take the family on a tour of the country.
Ajay: That’s a good idea. There’re many historical places that you should see.
Beenu: That’s what I thought too. You can read about them but surely there’s no substitute for seeing it with your own eyes.
Ajay: Where do you plan to go?
Beenu: Well, I thought we’d visit Agra first.
Ajay: That’s one of the oldest cities in the country, isn’t it?
Beenu: Yes, that’s what I have read in books.
Ajay: Well, I have been there. I’m sure you will like the place. You must go to Fatehpur Sikiri too.
Beenu: Thank you, I think we could manage it.
Ajay: Do you plan to visit any other place?
Beenu: No, I think Agra is as far as we can get this time.
Ajay: Well, goodbye. Have a nice trip.
Beenu: Thanks, goodbye.
Dialogue 3:
This is a conversation between two friends, Rahul
and Prakash, who are talking casually about their studies.
Prakash appears to be a little more serious about his studies.
In the middle of the dialogue the taunt by Rahul evokes an
aggressive response. However, the conversation ends on an
even note. Try to bring out the varying moods of the
participants when you speak.
Rahul: Why weren’t you at the party? I was expecting to see you there.
Prakash: I had planed to go, but had to study.
Rahul: How’re your studies coming along?
Prakash: Fairly well, I’m just beginning to release that I must study more if I wish to do well.
Rahul: Are you going to cinema on Saturday?
Prakash: If I’m through studying, I may.
Rahul: Is studying all you do?
Prakash: Just about. Last week I had to get ready for an exam. This weekend I have to get ready for another.
Rahul: When do you hope to finish your exams?
Prakash: I don’t know, really. If I’m lucky, I may get through in May.
Rahul: What do you plan to do after your Graduation?
Prakash: I have yet to make up my mind. I’ve got a couple of good offers.
Dialogue 4:
Two members of a club are planning to arrange a
picnic. They go into the details of arrangement. Mark how
the short remarks keep the conversation going in a pleasant
manner. You will also notice that some of the suggestions
are made in the form of questions. While practicing keep
these points in mind and keep your voice friendly and
informal.
Amar: The weather’s getting warm enough for picnics now.
Bhuvan: Why don’t we have one next Saturday?
Amar: O.K. Let’s make it a club picnic.
Bhuvan: No, I don’t think there’s enough money in the club account.
Amar: Won’t we have enough to buy cold drinks and ice-creams.
Bhuvan: Yes, we have got enough for them.
Amar: Well, then, let’s tell everyone to bring his own lunch. Cold drinks and the desert can be charged to club account.
Bhuvan: That’s a good idea. Then we won’t need committees either.
Amar: Now, let’s see. Doesn’t Hari have a Maruti van?
Bhuvan: Yes, he does. Shall we ask him to cart the cold drinks?
Amar: I don’t think he’d mind.
Bhuvan: Do you know a good place to go?
Amar: No, I don’t. I haven’t been on a picnic around here?
Bhuvan: Say, doesn’t that park down by the Blue Lake have benches and tables?
Amar: I think it does. That would be an ideal spot.
Bhuvan: And if it’s warm enough, we can go swimming.
Dialogue 5:
This dialogue takes place in a restaurant where
Babita has gone to dine. Note the extremely polite and
business- like tone of the bearer, Asim, and the authoritative
tone of Babita. Through a deft variation in his syntactical
patterns Asim is able to secure an order from Babita.
Asim: May, I take your order, madam?
Babita: Yes, I would like to order dinner now. I will have one plate of this special fried chicken and two chapaties.
Asim: Yes, madam, what vegetables would you prefer? You can pick out any two from this list here.
Babita: I think I’ll have fried potatoes and beans.
Asim: You also have a choice of soup or salad.
Babita: Is the vegetable soup prepared here, or is it out of a can?
Asim: This is our own recipe, madam.
Babita: Then I’ll take the vegetable soup.
Asim: What are you going to have to drink?
Babita: Coffee, please.
Asim: Will you have it with your dinner or with dessert?
Babita: With the dessert.
Asim: Would you like to order the dessert now?
Babita: I might as well. Ice-cream, please.
Asim: Yes, madam. Thank you.
Dialogue 6:
In this dialogue between a doctor and a patient,
notice how gradually and tactfully the former convinces the
latter on the need for healthy living and demolishes a
number of false notions he has. Try to capture the persuasive,
and yet, firm tone of doctor. Note how the confidence of the
patient, in what he thought to be right, gives way to a
receptive attitude. While practicing, reflect this change in
attitude.
Doctor: Well, Gopal. There is nothing seriously wrong with you physically. Basically you are fit, that’s what the reports show.
Gopal: Then why is it doctor that I’m always so tense?
Doctor: I think your condition has a lot to do with your way of life or habits.
Gopal: Way of life? Habits?
Doctor: Yes, now you tell me. You smoke, don’t you?
Gopal: I’m afraid I do, doctor.
Doctor: Rather heavily, I imagine.
Gopal: About fifty a day, I suppose.
Doctor: You should do your best to stop, you know.
Gopal: I’ve tried to give up smoking several times but it’s no good.
Doctor: Fifty a day is over doing it, you must admit. You must cut it down. I want you to make a real effort.
Gopal: Well, it’s easy to say give it up or cut it down but, you know how difficult it is.
Doctor: In my opinion you have no choice. Either you make a real effort or there’s no chance of your feeling better. I could prescribe a tranquillizer but would that help? I would like to see you normal again. And that’s why I want to know a few more things.
Gopal: Right, Sir.
Doctor: Your eating habits, for example. What do you normally eat during the day?
Gopal: I’m a good eater. At about 8:30 a.m. I eat a good breakfast.
Doctor: A good breakfast? What is it?
Gopal: Usually three or four stuffed parathas, washed down with a couple of cups of tea. I really enjoy my breakfast.
Doctor: I can see you do, but I’d advise you to eat much less. We’ll come to that later on. Go on.
Gopal: Before lunch, I have one or two samosas at about 11.00 a.m. and a cup of tea. I’ve so much work in the office that I begin to feel hungry at regular intervals.
Doctor: And then lunch?
Gopal: Around 1.15 p.m. Lunch has to be real quick because I’ve to reach office at 2.00 p.m. and I want 15 min for the newspaper.
Doctor: Try not to hurry through lunch.
Gopal: But I do make up for it in the evening. My dinner is rather heavy and I eat it leisurely. Most evenings I read a novel or listen to the radio.
Doctor: You do obviously enjoy your food. That’s fine. But I recommended that you eat less and healthy food. Instead of having that enormous breakfast, for example, take something lite – chapaties with salad and a cup of milk. And, no samosas at 11.00 a.m. A cup of tea should do.
Gopal: I see. But what about lunch?
Doctor: Eat your lunch leisurely. Remember that your health is at stake, not your job. After dinner, you should go for a walk. And have it a little early too.
Gopal: But, doctor, my wife is an expert at making parathas and pakauries.
Doctor: If you like, I’ll have a word with your wife.
Gopal: No. that won’t be necessary, doctor. Thanks very much. Bye.
Doctor: Bye.
Dialogue 7:
This is an informative conversation between a
doctor and his patient. The doctor in his conversation
unfolds the kinds of food essential for a healthy body. This
information is passed on in an informal, plain and jargon-
free language. You will notice that Jeevan’s tone is
inquisitive and the doctor is authoritative and definitive.
When you speak, try to reflect these tones in your speech.
Jeevan: Good evening, doctor.
Doctor: Good evening, Jeevan. What brings you to the hospital? What can I do for-you?
Jeevan: I’ve come for a medical check-up.
Doctor: What’s wrong with you?
Jeevan: I eat plenty of good food everyday but I still don’t feel strong and energetic and …..
Doctor: And at times you feel drained of al energy.
Jeevan: Yes. Exactly.
Doctor: What is your food intake like?
Jeevan: I eat bread, gram and meat and also fat in one form or another.
Doctor: This is the real cause of your bad health.
Jeevan: Why? Aren’t meat and gram good for health?
Doctor: Yes, they are. But they aren’t enough. Chemical analysis shows that meat and gram contain a lot of protein but don’t contain enough sugar or carbohydrates that give energy to the body.
Jeevan: Is sugar so necessary for good health?
Doctor: Yes, it is. It burns inside the body to give heat and energy.
Jeevan: But doesn’t fat give energy to the body?
Doctor: Yes, it does. But the digestion of fat takes much longer time and very often the excess energy is accumulated in the form of fat in various parts of the body.
Jeevan: So I should take a little bit of sugar everyday and that should keep me smart.
Doctor: No, I don’t mean that. That would be talking like a nineteenth century doctor.
Jeevan: Why? What was wrong with nineteenth century doctors?
Doctor: They believed that the body needed only three kinds of food – protein, fat and carbohydrate and they continued believing this until some one in 1910 did an experiment on rats.
Jeevan: That’s interesting. What was the experiment about?
Doctor: Chemically pure protein, carbohydrate and fat were fed to half a dozen adult rats for forty consecutive days and it was found that the rats actually lost their health instead of growing or even maintaining their health.
Jeevan: What did that experiment show? Did it show that the kind of food the rats were fed was harmful?
Doctor: No, it simply proved that the body needed something other than protein, fat and carbohydrate and that something was ‘vitamin’.
Jeevan: What odd people you doctors are. You do an experiment on the body of a rat and then at once apply your findings to the human body.
Doctor: Your comment is significant, Jeevan, I agree. But what is good for a rat’s body is usually good for the human body as well.
Jeevan: All right. In what form should I take these vitamins?
Doctor: Drink plenty of milk and eat vegetables which are rich in vitamins or take vitamins in the concentrated form and you will be al right.
Jeevan: Thank you. I must leave now. A few more patients are waiting outside. Good night.
Doctor: Good night.
Dialogue 8:
This is an informal conversation between Ganesh
and his son, Jogesh, on the subject of loud music. Ganesh
seems to be annoyed with the untimely and excessive use of
electronic media meant to inform and entertain. You will
note that he is not against these gadgets as such but
against their improper use. Your voice should reflect this
attitude of Ganesh. At places there are exclamatory remarks.
Be specially careful in articulating them.
Ganesh: There’s a dreadful din in Geeta’s bedroom, Jogesh.
What on earth is it?
Jogesh: Oh, she’s borrowed a record- player from one of her friends, papa and she’s trying out some of her latest records.
Ganesh: Does she have to have it on quite so loud? The whole house seems to be trembling with it. Anyway, why can’t she use our radiogram?
Jogesh: Ours isn’t any good, if you really want to hear the music. For one, it’s got such a small loudspeaker that only about half the notes are audible. And, we’ve been using it for years. It’s time we got a proper record-player, with bass and tremble controls.
Ganesh: That’d be a waste of money. We hardly ever use the gramophone and when we do, the quality seems perfectly alright to me.
Jogesh: That’s because you’ve got used to it. If we had a decent machine, we’d be able to play it more often. As it is, I wouldn’t risk playing my records on it.
Ganesh: Well, we’ll have to think about it. But shut the door, would you? It’ll keep some of the noise out. I thought I might look at the play on television. When does it come? Have you seen The Radio Times?
Jogesh: Yes, it’s on the stool by the fireplace. I’d been hoping to see the soccer international between India and Iran. It’s being played this evening. And I think it’s being televised.
Ganesh: That’s right from eight to nine. And the play begins at 9.15 after the news. You must as well switch it on now. You’ll catch the end of the football match.
Jogesh: The picture takes ages to come on in this set. Ah! At last! It’s not good, is it? It looks as though they’re playing in a fog. Shall I put the big light out?
Ganesh: Yes, just leave the little light on. That’s better. I think that’s as good a picture as you can hope for. I’m afraid the tube’s going.
Jogesh: What you ought to do is to hire a set. You pay a certain amount a month, and the firm guarantees to maintain the set for you.
Ganesh: No, I think I’d rather buy one. These, modern sets are pretty reliable. Hello! Someone’s scored a goal. Would that be India or Iran?
Intonation
[In the previous topic we discussed the vibration of the vocal cords.]
Voiced sounds are produced when the vocal cords are kept loosely together to vibrate. The vibration of the vocal cords produces a musical note called voice. During normal speech, for an adult male, the vocal cords vibrate between 80 and 120 times per second and between 150 to 200 times a second in the case of an adult female. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called the frequency of vibration and this determines the pitch of the voice. The more rapidly the vocal cords vibrate, the higher will be the pitch.
When we hear someone speak, we realize that he doesn’t always speak on the same note. We hear consonant vibrations in the level at which his voice is pitched. That is to say, sometimes the pitch rises and sometimes it falls. At other times, it remains level, high or low. The pattern of vibration of the pitch of the voice ( i.e., the way in which the pitch varies) constitute the intonation of a language.
A syllable on which a pitch change takes place is usually marked with one of the following signs.
1) [ ] the pitch falls from very high to very low
(the tone is called a high fall)
2) [ ] the pitch falls from mid to very low
( the tone is called a low fall)
3) [ ] the pitch rises from very low to very high.
(the tone is called high rise)
4) [ ] the pitch rises from low to mid.
(the tone is called low rise)
5) [ ] the pitch falls from about mid to low and then
rises again to mid. (the tone is called fall-rise)
6) [ ] the pitch rises from low to about mid and then
falls again to low. (the tone is called rise-fall)
An accented syllable can be said with a changing pitch or on a level pitch, high or low. If it is said on a high level pitch, it is marked [ ] with a vertical bar above and before the syllable. If it is said on a low level pitch, it is marked [ ] with a vertical bar below and before the syllable.
Ex:
1. I’ve just bought a car. ([ ] - high falling tone)
2. George is a tall boy ([ ] – high falling tone)
3. I trust you found him well ([ ] – low rising)
4. Did you say snake? ([ ] – high rising tone)
5. I saw it ten times. ([ ] – low falling tone)
6. The door is shut. ([ ] – falling rising tone)
7. I met him last night. ( [ ] –rising falling tone)
In the above examples, the syllables marked [ ] or [ ]
are said on level tones, high and low respectively and the syllables marked with the sign [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] or [ ] are those during the pronunciation of which some sort of pitch movement takes place. A syllable which is said on a level tone, high or low, is said to have a ‘static tone’ and one on which there is a pitch change is said to have a ‘kinetic tone’.
To study English Intonation, one has to consider
three important factors. They are:
a) The division of an utterance into groups.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement has to be initiated, and
c) The choice of a tone.
a) The division of an utterance into groups
We divide long utterances into small groups while speaking. In other words, we pause here and there in the middle of an utterance. The stretch of speech between any two pauses constitutes a group.
Ex:
Sentences without any pauses.
1. I’m going.
2. Can we go there?
3. Where do you think you are going?
Sentences divide into two groups. (So there will be one pause in the middle of each sentence)
1. When you go out, / shut the door.
2. If it rains, / stay back in the office.
3. Prices are coming down / inspite of the recent floods.
4. All those who have gone before you / have submitted to death.
5. When the cat is away/ the mice play.
Each group is called a breath group, indicating that the break up is physiological. We pause in the middle to breathe. These groups are also called sense-groups, as pause cannot be made at arbitrarily chosen places but it should be made in such a way that the sense of the utterances is not lost. These are also called tone- groups as each group forms a compact unit and must be said with a particular intonation.
Very often, punctuation gives a clue to the division of an utterance into tone groups, though it is not a sure guide. A full-stop always indicates the end of a tone group and a comma does it at times.
b) The choice of a syllable on which the pitch- movement
has to be initiated
Having divided an utterance into tone-groups, the speaker will have to choose a syllable, on which to initiate a pitch movement during speech. In connected speech as learnt, content words receive the accent and form words do not.
Ex: John and George are friends.
John, George and friends will receive the accent and and are will not. The speakers will decide on which of the three syllables John, George or friends to initiate the pitch movement. The syllable on which a pitch movement begins is called the nucleus of the tone group or the tonic syllable. Usually the choice of the nucleus will depend upon the meaning the speaker wants to convey.
Ex:
1. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( park – tonic)
2. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( walk – not to make the dog run)
3. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
( dog – dog and not any other animal for a walk)
In the above sentences, prominence was given to all the content words and made one of the content words stand out from the rest by initiating a pitch movement.
4. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(You is the nucleus – the addressee but not anyone else)
5. I want you to take the dog for a walk in the park.
(I is the nucleus – he and no one else, is giving the order)
If the content does not demand that a particular syllable be made specially prominent, the last prominent syllable in a tone group will be the nucleus.
The first accented syllable in a tone-group is called the head, the most prominent syllable in a tone–group on which a pitch movement takes place is called the nucleus; the syllable between the head and the nucleus constitute the body of the tone-group, the syllables after the nucleus, if any, constitute the tail of the tone-group. The syllable before the first accented syllable, if any, constitutes the pre-head.
Ex:
Pre-head Head Body Nucleus Tail
1) It looks as if it’s rain now.
2) I’m going to mad ras to mor row.
3) - Go and get me some wa ter.
4) - Shut - up. -
5) That girl’s very beau tiful.
6) - - - Thanks -
7) It’s - - John. -
c) The choice of a tone
After dividing a sentence into tone-groups and having chosen the nucleus, the speaker has to choose one of the various tones.
Intonation in English serves a grammatical function and an attitudinal function. With the help of intonation the listeners can make out whether a particular utterance is a statement or question, a command or a request.
1) Looking for something (falling tone – a statement)
2) Looking for something? (Rising tone a question)
3) Going to Bom bay. (Falling tone – a statement)
4) Going to Bombay? ( Rising tone – a question)
5) Shut the door ( Falling tone – a command)
6) Shut the door. (Rising tone – a request)
Secondly, with the help of intonation one can find-
out the attitude or mood of the speaker – whether he is bored, annoyed, interested in the subject of conversation, sarcastic, etc.
a) The falling tone may be used in
i. Ordinary statements made with no implication.
ii. Wh – questions asked neutrally.
iii. Commands.
iv. Exclamations.
b) The raising tone may be used in
i. Incomplete utterance, often the first of the two clauses in a complex statement.
ii. Yes/ No questions.
iii. Wh- questions asked in a warm, friendly way.
iv. Polite requests and encouraging invitations.
c) The falling – rising tone may be used in
i. Special implications not verbally expressed.
The intonation of a foreign language is an
extremely difficult aspect of the language to master. From the numerous examples given in this chapter you may perhaps get a theoretical knowledge of English intonation. It is perhaps necessary to listen to a native speaker of English for a considerable length of time to gain mastery over this extremely complex aspect of spoken English.
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