📄️ Introduction
Informal spoken sentences are generally simpler than written sentences. They have fewer subordinate clauses, and mostly use a small number of common conjunctions (e.g. and, but, that, so, if, because, when). Noun phrases are usually short: a subject is often a single pronoun. More formal grammatical structures (see here) and vocabulary (see here) are unusual. While many spoken utterances are similar in structure to written sentences, word order is less fixed. Information may be ‘spaced out’ more by putting some of it before or after the main sentence (see here). Some speech does not fit into the ‘complete sentence’ pattern of writing at all.
📄️ Spoken sentence structure
Spacing out information: a course with three levels, it’s carefully put together
📄️ Avoiding repetition: *Wonderful, isn’t it?*
Speech is more tolerant of repetition than formal writing (see here), but even in spoken exchanges people often prefer to avoid repeating each other’s words without a good reason. There is a common kind of exchange where one speaker gives his/her opinion of something, and the other agrees by saying the same thing in other words which are at least as emphatic. Repetition is carefully avoided.
📄️ Discourse markers in speech
Discourse markers are words and expressions which help to structure spoken exchanges and written text. (e.g. first of all, by the way, on the other hand, in any case, to sum up). English has a very large number of these. Some are used in all kinds of discourse, some mostly in formal writing, and others mainly in informal speech. Those that are most common in speech are discussed here; some of these (but not all) are also used in formal writing, (see here). Discourse markers can communicate several things:
📄️ Declarative questions: *That’s the boss?*
In spoken questions, we do not always put an auxiliary verb before the subject.
📄️ Rhetorical questions: *Who cares?*
Questions that do not expect an answer
📄️ Echo questions: *She’s invited how many?*
You’re getting married?
📄️ Question tags: basic information
What are question tags?
📄️ Question tags: advanced points
aren’t I?
📄️ Reply questions: *Was it? Did you, dear?*
Short questions are often used in conversation to show that the listener is paying attention and interested. They are constructed with auxiliary verb + pronoun, like question tags (see here).
📄️ Short answers: *Yes, he can*, etc
Answers are often grammatically incomplete, because they do not need to repeat words that have just been said. A common ‘short answer’ pattern is subject + auxiliary verb, together with whatever other words are really necessary.
📄️ so am I, neither do they, etc
so + auxiliary + subject
📄️ Politeness: using questions
Requests: Could you …?
📄️ Politeness: distancing verb forms
Past tenses: How much did you want to spend?
📄️ Politeness: softening expressions
quite, maybe, I think, etc
📄️ Pronunciation: stress and rhythm
Stress and rhythm are important elements in English pronunciation. If learners pronounce all the syllables in a sentence too regularly, with the same force and at the same speed, they can be quite hard for English speakers to understand. And if learners are not sensitive to English stress and rhythm, they may not perceive unstressed syllables (especially ‘weak forms’, (see here) at all, and this may make it difficult for them to follow natural English speech.
📄️ Pronunciation: intonation
Intonation is the word for the ‘melody’ of spoken language: the way the musical pitch of the voice rises and falls. Intonation systems in languages are very complicated and difficult to analyse, and linguists do not all agree about how English intonation works.
📄️ Pronunciation: weak and strong forms
What are weak and strong forms?