Situational Dialogues [antikvár]

Mm' ¦ . ' 1 I I : I 'il ¦ ¦ f i',! , I - Introduction This situationally-graded book is intended for intennediate and advanced students wishing to learn and practise the type of informal conversational English in current, everyday use. Forty-four situations are presented, each in the form of four short dialogues. The aim of the student should be to memorise as many as possible of the expressions and phrases contained in the dialogues, since they are used by English people time and time again in the given situations. DIALOGUES Each situation is expressed by four dialogues arranged in parallel, so that any of A's first utterances may be followed by any of B's first utterances, and so on. This means that, with 34x4 arrangement, we have 256 different variations of the same situation, leaving the class with a high degree of choice. Practice can be continued without boredom, and, by reading and acting out the dialogues many times in class and at home, the students painlessly learn the contents by heart. DRILLS These are based not on a grammatically graded sequence but on the dialogue situations and are intended to provide additional practice in some of the more important constructions. They should not be attempted one after the other, but done as a break between dialogue practice sessions. In both drills and dialogues, stress marks ' are used to indicate emphasis. A key to some of the harder drills is given at the end of the book; drills for which there is a key are marked thus:—* INTONATION The speaker's mental attitude is shown by the way in which the musical pitch of the voice changes. Three basic intonation tunes are used in English speech, each in various situations. These tunes may be broadly classified as: (a) the falling tune (b) the rising tune (c) the falling-rising tune (a) The falling tune The voice falls from a high to a low note on one stressed syllable. It is used in the following cases: 1 in short complete statements It's 'not 'far. 2 for questions beginning with a question word 'How much is this 'tie? 3 for question tags when the speaker is sure that what he says is right It's 'hot today, 'isn't it? 4 for orders and exclamations 'Don't for'get. (b) The rising tune The voice rises on the last stressed word or on the unstressed syllables following the last stress. It is used in the following cases: 1 for statements intended to encourage 'That's a good i'dea. 2 for questions which are answered by 'Yes' and 'No' Do you 'want to 'go? 'Did you 'see the 'elephant? 3 for questions beginning with question words when the speaker wishes to show special interest 'Where do you 'live?