AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- English teacher Lida Baker in Los Angeles talks about improving English pronunciation by understanding the idea of thought groups.

RS: Thought groups are something we don't even think about as native speakers of English. It's a way to break long sentences into shorter pieces, separated by slight pauses, to help listeners organize the meaning.

AA: But English learners need help to develop this skill when they study pronunciation. Lida says over the last twenty years, many teachers of English have come to focus not just on vowels and consonants, but also on stress and intonation.


LIDA BAKER: "So we're talking about the way that the voice moves up and down and where we pause and things of that sort. This is a much more authentic way of learning about spoken language."
RS: Take a sentence like: "I took the milk from the table and I put it in the refrigerator."

BAKER: "This is not right: [robotic monotone] 'I took the milk from the refrigerator and I put it on the table.' Nobody talks like that."

AA: "You sound like a robot."

LIDA BAKER: "That's right. But that's not how we speak English. What we do is, the voice moves up and down, and there's also an alternation between syllables that are stressed and pronounced clearly, and syllables that are unstressed and therefore are reduced and spoken very quickly. So 'I took the milk' becomes 'I took the milk,' puh-PAH, puh-PAH, OK?

"So within each thought group you will also find that there are these variations in pitch, with the voice moving up and down, and then syllables that are pronounced more clearly, syllables that are reduced and pronounced unclearly. So you get this effect of 'I took the milk,' puh-PAH, puh-PAH, 'from the table,' puh-puh-PAH-PAH, 'and I put it,' da-da-DAH-DAH, 'in the refrigerator,' puh-puh-PAH-puh-puh-puh."

AA: "You've got a hit there!"

LIDA BAKER: "Funny you should say that, because one of the easiest ways to learn about thought groups is to listen to popular music. And it happens that my daughter is absolutely crazy about the Beatles and she plays the guitar, so yesterday she was singing 'Can't Buy Me Love.'"

MUSIC: "Can't Buy Me Love"