One of the factors that contributes to how we accurately understand sentences or ideas we are listening to and how well we put our words across and make our listeners comprehend the way we intend them is our skill in recognizing prosodic features and expertise in using them in communication.
A particular type of prosodic features can change the meaning of a sentence. Given this, students must be able to know to how to use and recognize each of them. Below are the the prosodic features with their respective definitions.
- Volume - this is an increase of loudness of the words we utter that could either mean we are angry or frightened. When written, words or sentences are usually ended with an exclamation point or they are being in all capital letters or italics.
- Projection - an ability to make our voice clearly heard at a distance. This is most needed when talking in front of a big audience that we need to speak at the top of our lungs in order to be heard and understood, especially if we don't use a microphone and a loud speaker.
- Pitch - is sometimes used interchangeably with intonation. However, pitch and intonation are two different things. When it comes to the frequency (lowness or highness) of one's voice we mean pitch. For example, we speak in a lower pitch when are tired or have a problem. When we are happy, excited, or surprised, we speak in a higher pitch than we normally do.
- Stress - also called emphasis, is one of the easiest prosodic features to use and recognize in spoken language. Easy as it may seem, stressing words correctly takes practice and familiarization. Two-syllable words are probably the easiest as we only have one part to emphasize, but for longer words, there are primary stressed syllable and slightly stressed one.
- Intonation - known as the rising and falling of our voice at the end of a sentence when we speak. Given this, intonation is sometimes referred to as the music of a language. The rise and fall of our voice is commonly observed in asking questions or using tag questions. Questions answerable by yes or no are spoken in rising intonation while wh-questions are spoken in falling intonation.
- Juncture - enables the hearer to detect the word or phrase boundary. Proper juncture is necessary in speech so listeners would not misunderstood or misinterpret the words way say. For instance, we need to say correctly and differently the phrase ice cream and I scream.
- Speech rate - as its name suggests, it means the speed we apply when saying a sentence. The speech rate indicates several attitudes or situations. We tend to speak faster when we are in a hurry or nervous than normal. In contrast, we speak slowly if we careful not to loss with our train of thought.