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The chapters reflect different approaches to teaching pronunciation, nowhere more than in the varied terminology used by the authors. Although we considered requiring uniform terminology, we decided that it was more important that authors use the terminology that is theoretically and practically comfortable for them. As a result, some things may be unclear to readers who are unfamiliar with the different names for pronunciation features, especially for suprasegmental features. Suprasegmentals have a long history of being described and named in different ways, although for the purposes of this book, the differences are minor enough that they can be ignored by teachers. Nonetheless, it is helpful to list the terms used by various authors in Table 1.1. Thought groups refer to the speaker’s breaking speech up into logical and typically grammatical phrases of around five to seven words. They are the structure in which all suprasegmentals (except word stress) occur. Prominence refers to speakers’ highlighting particular words within a phrase to call attention to them (e.g., I HATE eating that stuff!). Intonation refers to the movement of pitch across the thought group, and especially at the end of a phrase (e.g., Really? You hate it?, both with rising pitch). Rhythm refers to the patterns of strong and weak syllables across a thought group. A language like English has large differences in syllable length, while other languages, such as varieties of Chinese, do not. Finally, word stress refers to the dictionary patterns of prominence within a word. But since not all languages use stress, we also refer to word prosody and tone.

Table 1.1 Names given to suprasegmentals by different authors.