Showing A1+/A2 learners a waveform of speech makes stress visible: the tallest peak is the stressed syllable or word. It helped with a coursebook listening and gave students confidence with polite intonation.
Procedure (A1+/A2)
- Elicit word stress in familiar words; record yourself; show the waveform; point to the tallest peak.
- Load the coursebook audio; play it sentence by sentence; match the tallest peak to the stressed word.
- Look at the melody (rise or fall); practise more naturally.
- Record each student saying one sentence; check the stress placement.
- Role-play adapted from the dialogue, focusing on polite intonation and stress.
Tools: online voice recorder, mp3cut; Audacity or Praat for accuracy.
Limits
One lesson; “tallest = stressed” is a simplification (pitch and duration matter too); check data rules before uploading student voices.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- On the smartboard, Audacity’s waveform is visible to the whole class. It’s an engaging way to show stress-timing to Uzbek-L1 learners, whose rhythm tends to be more even.
Connections
Chants train stress-timed rhythm · Intelligibility as the goal, accent as the learner’s informed choice