Surprise surprise!
‘Intonation’ means the rise / fall in our voices. Have you noticed that we use intonation to show how we feel? What happened to your intonation when you reacted to your partner’s surprising news?
Get into pairs. Tell your partner something surprising you heard / read in the news recently. When you’re ready, tell the class.
Now practise your ‘surprise intonation’. Listen and repeat:
Listen to this conversation. The second person is surprised by what the first person says.
Listen carefully to the intonation.
A: Guess what! You remember David? He’s got himself another girlfriend!
B: Has he?
A: Yeah, her name’s Sheila. She’s beautiful!
B: Is she?
A: In fact, they’re thinking of getting married!
B: Are they?
Task Tree
What happened to the second person’s intonation? Draw a line above speaker B’s
answers in task 3 to show the rise and fall of the voice.
Task Four
Has he? Is she? Are they?
Surprise surprise!
Task Five
Get into pairs. Repeat the dialogue to practise sounding surprised. Say each part
several times each until you feel comfortable with the intonation.
Task Six
Get into pairs. Fill in the gaps below.
a) I’m actually Australian.
........................................ ....................................... ?
b) We’ve got seven kids now.
........................................ ....................................... ?
c) He earns £100,000 a year.
........................................ ....................................... ?
d) I had coffee with Barak Obama yesterday.
........................................ ....................................... ?
e) I run 100km a week.
........................................ ....................................... ?
Check your answers in class. Don’t forget to use the right intonation. You can use the
recording of the answers as a model.
Task Seven
Write down the most surprising thing about yourself. If you can’t think of a true thing,
invent a false one! Go round the class and tell the other students what you’ve written.
Remember to react with surprise to other people’s sentences!
Surprise surprise!