Practice activity. What is the music of English pronunciation? You've learned that there's more to pronunciation than just individual sounds. In order to be understood easily, you also need to practice the musical aspects of pronunciation. These are words stress and rhythm, reduced words and connected speech, sentence focus and intonation. Let's check your understanding of what these are. This practice activity will help you find out how much you already know about these things. The first question is about syllables, the number of beats in a word, for example summer has two syllables, su mmer. How many syllables do these words have? Computer, computer. Yes computer has three syllables, com-pu-ter. Supermarket, supermarket. Yes, supermarket has four syllables, su-per-mar-ket. Repeat, repeat, yes, repeat has two syllables, re-peat. excellent, excellent. Yes, excellent has three syllables, ex-cel-lent. Now listen to these words again, which syllable is stressed in each word? That is which syllable is emphasized the most? For example in summer, the first syllable is stressed, summer. Now try the other words. Computer, computer, computer is stressed on the second syllable, computer. Supermarket, supermarket. Supermarket is stressed on the first syllable, supermarket. Repeat, repeat. Repeat is stressed on the second syllable, repeat. Excellent, excellent. Excellent is stressed on the first syllable, excellent. Next you'll see and hear some sentences from an ordinary conversation using reduced words and connected speech. The shortened weakened or combined forms that we hear so often when people talk. What words should go in the blanks? How was your English test? Not good, there were 20 questions and I got them all wrong. Did you study? No, I didn't. You should have studied more. Now, let's check your answers, repeat each sentence. How was your English test? Not good, there were 20 questions and I got them all wrong. Did you study? No, I didn't. You should have studied more. Now we'll practice sentence focus, one word in each of these sentences is emphasized more than the others. Listen carefully, which word is stressed the most? Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a cat. What's your cat's name? It's tiger. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a dog. Here's the dialog again with the stressed words marked, say the dialogue and try to emphasize the words with circles over them. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a cat. What's your cat's name? It's tiger. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a dog. Finally, let's practice intonation, the up and down melody of your voice as you speak. Listen to the same dialogue, this time try to tell if your voice goes up or down at the end of each sentence. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a cat. What's your cat's name? It's tiger. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a dog. Now here's the same dialogue with the up or down into a nation marked. Let's say the dialogue and follow the intonation lines. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a cat. What's your cat's name? It's tiger. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have a dog. In the next lessons, you'll learn more about each of these things that make up the music of English pronunciation.