Natural pauses in connected speech.

[The apprentice]

I ask for your assistance in helping me identify where pauses can be made within each sentence. I've noticed students have serious trouble with pauses when reading and consequently when speaking also.


(1) I haven't had a date since Angela broke up with me.


(2) What about looking through the personal ads on the Internet


(3) But the people you meet are always different from what you expect.


(4) Why don't you join an online dating service?


(5) It might be a good idea to check out those discussion groups at the bookstore.


Some of those sentences above may be pronounced without any pause, but for a beginner would be helpful to make pauses to help them improve their fluency. For example:


(1) I haven't had a date/since Angela broke up with me.


(2) What about looking through the personal ads/on the Internet


(3) But the people you meet/are always different/ from what you expect

(4) Why don't you join/an online dating service?


(5) It might be a good idea/to check out those discussion groups/at the bookstore.


* The back slash symbol (/) marks the pauses.

 

[The apprentice]

Other than the pauses made after a punctuation mark, long sentences have natural pauses which are not marked by a punctuation mark. Pauses within a sentence are marked by grammatical units called thought groups, which is a group of words forming a unit of meaning; this seems to be a realationship between phonology and grammar.


I think as soon as the students start reading and speaking into thought groups, they'll make less pauses and will speak more fluently.