1-variant. Task1

2-variant. Task 1
Phonological knowledge of a language involves segmental and supra-segmental features. Segmental features are phonological units which consist of simple sounds, that is consonants and vowels. In English, there are 24 consonants and 12 vowels. Each segmental feature is considered to be an entity in itself and sequences of them are strung together in an utterance. Supra-segmental features, on the other hand, extend beyond one sound segment in an utterance, over longer stretches of speech. Supra-segmental features include features such as pitch, length, tempo, stress and rhythm. Collectively, the supra-segmental features are also called prosody or just intonation.
In the phonological analysis of the university students’ spoken discourse, there are several characteristics: (1) they have difficulty in pronouncing consonant cluster, such as /gh/ and determining the vowel sounds; (2) the word stress is often put at the last syllable and does not change even when the word is put in larger units (phrases and clauses); (3) the rhythm patterns are following the stress placement, so one rhythm unit ends with a stressed syllable; (4) there are some irregularities of the intonation contour for affirmative sentences; while questions tend to be pronounced with rising intonation. Finally, I am in opinion that the students are still influenced by their first language in their spoken discourse. This results in English with Indonesian accent. Even though it does not cause misunderstanding at the moment, this may become problematic if they have to communicate in the real world.

In a sentence or an intonation group some of the words are of greater importance than the others. This largely depends on the situation or context. Words, which provide most of the intonation are brought out in speech by means of sentence stress. Stress is a prosodic (segmental) phenomenon which characterizes phonetic units higher than segmental phonemes. It can characterize syllables, rhythmic groups, intonation groups and utterances. There are 2 types of stress: word stress and sentence stress.

Types of stress in languages
In different languages stress may be achieved by various combinations of these parameters depending on which parameter in the principle one in producing the effect of stress. Word Stress of languages may be of different types.
There are languages with dynamic word stress in such languages is achieved by a greater force of articulation which result is the greater loudness on the auditory level and the greater intensity on the acoustic level. The stressed syllables in such languages are louder than the unstressed ones. All other parameters play less important role in producing the effect of stress in such languages.
English and Russian Word Stress are dynamic. In Languages with musical Word Stress, prominence is mainly achieved by variations in pitch level. The main acoustic parameter is in fundamental frequencies. Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese are languages with musical word stress.
In languages with quantitative word stress, the effect of stress is mainly based on the quantity of the sound that in its duration a longer pronunciation of word stress is quantitative word stress.
In spoken discourse the boundaries between words are very often not clear-cut. Words and sounds are lost and linked together in different ways to enable us to articulate with minimal movement.
This is one of the reasons learners find spoken discourse more difficult to understand than written discourse. At higher levels it is often not a lack of vocabulary which prevents understanding, but lack of ability to deal with these features of connected speech. Native speakers are more able to use top-down processing to decide whether what they have heard is red dye or red eye.


Task 2
Polite conversation involves a good balance of talking and listening. No single person should dominate the conversation, so keep your answers to the point. If someone asks you about your family, be sure to give a thorough answer, but do not drone on.
Brown and Levinson (1987) suggest that there are four types of politeness strategies. They are bald on-record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record strategy. Politeness strategies are often used in real life situation in order to maintain each other's faces.
Both Holmes (2001: 268) and Yule (1997: 64) differentiate politeness into two types namely, positive politeness and negative politeness. Positive politeness is an appeal to solidarity toward others, that is how to make hearer feel good or to make him or her feel that his or her values are shared.