point and counterpoint

Teaching focus
for conversational use
John M. Levis

The skilful use of focus, or intonational prominence, to create meaning is

essential for learners of English. To take full advantage of this resource,
students must learn to perceive, produce, and predict how focus is used. The
last of these areas—prediction—is usually taught with reference to word class
and new/given information. This paper presents an alternative approach to
predicting focus which appeals to functional and meaning regularities which
do not depend on extensive written input, and are more easily applicable to
normal conversation. Analysis and possible exercises for three regularities are
presented: focus in answers to questions, the correction of misinformation, and
focus in repeated questions. Appealing to these and other functional
regularities will help in bridging the gap between classroom instruction and the
conversational use of focus.

Introduction Pronunciation instruction usually includes a variety of topics, such as

rhythm, final intonation, vowel and consonant sounds, and the placing of
intonational prominence, or focus. The last of these topics is essential to
any pronunciation course because of its role in highlighting information
that is important in the discourse.
Focus, which has also been called emphasis, sentence stress, nucleus,
main stress, and tonic accent, represents greater length, pitch
movement, and loudness on a syllable, causing it to be more prominent
than other syllables in a phrase (Dalton and Seidlhofer 1994). An
example with the focused syllables in capital letters is given in (1):
(1) A: Last week, I went to the beach.
B: really? How long were you there?
Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) say that focus is ‘maybe the most important
function of intonation, and almost certainly the most teachable one’ (p. 81,
their emphasis). Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996) say that
‘contextually appropriate control of stress [i.e. focus] and intonation is an
essential part of oral communicative competence that is not usually self-
evident to nonnative speakers’ (p. 218). Jenkins (1997), in attempting to
divide the essential from the expendable in teaching English as an
international language, listed focus as the single most important element

ELT Journal Volume 55/1 January 2001 © Oxford University Press 47

 to teach. In contrast, she said that stress timing, rhythm, and the final
pitch movement of an utterance (i.e. its intonation) are not essential.

Predicting focus A complete treatment of focus involves three areas: perception,

production, and prediction (Dickerson 1989). Perception and production
have been emphasized by many writers in both textbooks and articles.
Prediction is much less commonly addressed, but when it is, it usually
occurs in the following ways, both of which have had an important role in
teaching.

The word class The first way that focus can be predicted is through word class. Typically,
approach content words (nouns, most verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are potentially in
focus, since they carry the greatest semantic weight in what is said
(Dalton and Seidlhofer 1994). Neutral focus falls on the last content word
of a phrase or sentence, as in (2). This way of predicting focus has a long
history, and works very well for isolated sentences.1
(2) I went to the beach.

The new information The major problem with predicting focus by word class is that it does not
approach always work well in context. The word class approach for (3) predicts that
shoes would have tonic accent every time it appears. This does not
happen, obviously, because focus in context is closely related to
information structure, that is, given or new information (Halliday 1967).
In a new information approach, focus is usually presented through
dialogues and paragraphs, as in (3), that shows new information
receiving focus.
(3) X: I’d like some shoes.
Y: What kind of shoes?
X: The beautiful kind!
Y: black or brown?
X: Neither. I’m tired of black and brown. I want red shoes.
shiny red shoes!
(Gilbert 1993: 88)
Dialogues like (3) show learners how native speakers tend to place tonic
accent in discourse. The written presentation allows for careful
construction and explicit analysis, and allows learners a chance to follow
a clear model in practice. Predicting focus as a function of new
information is also a significant improvement over prediction by word
class.
Example (3) su¤ers from a basic flaw in encouraging transfer to speech,
however. Like many other pronunciation exercises, it assumes that
learners can easily transfer production from a written text to free speech.
There are at least two reasons to question this assumption with respect to
focus: one is a cognitive limitation, and the other a planning limitation.

A cognitive problem Although carefully constructed dialogues lead learners to believe that the
with the approaches determination of new and given information is simple, it is often not
transparent. Dickerson (1989) shows that new information does not
mean all new information, but rather the last piece of new information in

48 John M. Levis
 a phrase, as in (4). Although there is a lot of new information, usually the
focused element will be near the end of the phrase. The new information
in B’s utterance is highlighted in italics, and the focus is in capital letters.
(4) A: I just got back from the beach.
B: really? Jim told me that you were going to the moun tains.
Using new information to teach focus also assumes that learners know
that new information does not include grammatical, or function, words.
In (5), for instance, Who, go, and with are all new information, but with is
unlikely to be the focus, because it is a function word.
(5) A: I just got back from the beach.
B: really? Who did you go with?
There are also common, systematic exceptions to the given/new
regularity of adverbials of time, for instance, as in (6) (Cruttenden 1990).
Normal focus, even in isolated sentences, is not on the final content word
when it is part of a time adverbial. To a student, this is simply a place
where the rules do not work very well.
(6) A: Hi. What have you been doing recently?
B: I was at the beach for a while. I just got back.
In my experience, I have also found that learners find it diªcult to think
in terms of new and given information. For instance, although Halliday’s
(1967) insights about tonic accent and new information state a
systematic regularity for English, the details of the system are not always
transparent. This means that while new and given information are
valuable concepts for analysis, students will often have diªculty applying
them to dialogues, paragraphs, and free speech.

A planning problem Lack of ability to plan a speech ahead of time is the second major
with the approaches limitation for learners. Although people who give speeches and teach
classes have some opportunity to prepare in advance, and to speak from a
prepared text, speakers and listeners in conversation do not. They make
decisions about focus as they go along, responding to other people’s
speeches, and making their own choices about what information to
highlight. They cannot refer to a pre-planned written or memorized text.
Because of this, predicting focus only in terms of new and given
information gleaned from planned-out examples is likely to be of limited
value in transfer to speech.

A functional Because learners face significant cognitive and planning problems, they
approach need exercises that do not only depend on their ability to define word
class, their understanding of information structure, or their ability to
plan. They also need exercises that exploit common functional uses of
focus, and provide practice that will more easily transfer to conversation.
This paper presents three common functional uses of focus that can
supplement instruction using information structure and word class:
focus in answers to questions, focus in correcting misinformation, and
focus in repeated questions. Each can be used to supplement
dependence on information structure as the explanation for focus

Teaching focus for conversational use 49

 placement. I have consistently found these to be e¤ective ways to predict
and practice focus. I have also found that their transfer to speech is much
better than equivalent amounts of time spent in teaching through word
class or new information approaches. A brief description of the issues
involved in each functional regularity will be followed by example
teaching exercises.

Focus in answers In general, answers to questions receive focus. This regularity is

to choice questions especially apparent for choice (alternative) questions and information
questions. It is less apparent for yes/no questions, which allow a much
greater variety of answers, many of which may not explicitly require the
answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but which are still reasonable based on cooperative
principles of conversation (e.g. A: ‘Are you going to the game?’ B: ‘What
do you think?’, or B: ‘Do you think it will rain?’, etc.). Choice and
information questions, on the other hand, seek specific information
which receives the focus.
Choice questions illustrate the principle that answers to questions are
accented because they give hearers the information they want to know.
Choice questions also have a clear focus pattern on each choice. Practice
exercises for choice questions include interviews, the ‘20 Questions’ type
of game (usually used for yes/no questions, but easily adapted to choice
questions), and dialogues. To introduce this type of focus it is helpful to
use grammatically-simple choice questions. The cartoon in (7) gives
several simple choice questions, and provides the basis for a good
introduction to this use of focus.2
(7)

Activity 1: Create a conversation

This activity asks students to create choice questions, answer them, and
add comments or extra information to make the interaction more realistic.
Directions
Find out something about another student. Student A asks a choice
question about the two items after item 1. Student B answers the question
and adds more information. Student A responds to the information from

50 John M. Levis
 Student B. Continue the conversation for about 1–2 minutes. Then switch
roles, with Student B asking a question from item 2.

1 Indian food/French food

2 chicken/beef
3 action movies/romantic movies
4 warm weather/cold weather
Example beer / wine
Student A: Do you like beer or wine better?
Student B: wine. I don’t really like the taste of beer.
Student A: Oh, really? I thought almost everyone liked beer.
Student B: Not me. I’ve never liked it much.

This activity provides practice which is both controlled and meaningful.

It creates an opportunity for the students to practice focus in a well-
defined functional context, while at the same time asking them to
concentrate on meaning in the developing conversation.

Focus in answers to Information (WH) questions, with the exception of ‘why’, usually follow
information the principle that answers to questions are in focus. The WH word asks
questions for specific information, and it is usually evident to learners that the
answer to the question should have a tonic accent, as in (8), in which
Where is answered by bank.
(8) A: Where did John go?
B: To the bank.
Even when focus is not on the last content word of the answer, as in (9),
the answer to the question receives the focus.
(9) A: When do you want to go?
B: Would seven be good?
Although the new information approach will often help a learner to
correctly place focus for the answers, knowing that the answer to the
question word will carry the focus better meshes with the conversational
goal, to provide the information asked for by the questioner. This
simplifies the predictive burden for the learner, and encourages an
appropriate response in conversation.

Activity 2: Questions I like, questions I hate

This exercise, adapted for pronunciation practice from Gerngross and
Puchta (1992), raises awareness of the connection between focus on the
answer and the question. To start, the teacher writes the answers to four
personal questions about himself/herself on the board, marking the
focus. Students, in small groups or as a full class, try to guess what the
questions are. The teacher can help the students to guess the questions
by using mime or actions.
example: Answers Questions (Written after being guessed)
It’s brown. (What color is your car?)
For years. (How long have you been a teacher?)
WyOming. (Where do you like to go on vacation?)
michael. (What’s your middle name?)

Teaching focus for conversational use 51

 After the teacher’s questions have been discovered, the focus connection
between the answer and the question is pointed out. Then, working in
groups of 3–4, each of the students writes the answers to two personal
questions, starting with words like who, where, when, what, how many,
how much, or how long. The answers carry the focus, because they match
the WH word in the questions. The other students try to guess the
questions.
This activity provides an opportunity for students to learn how focus is
used to provide specific information in answering questions, an
awareness that is crucial when using focus in unplanned speech.

Focus in correcting Correction of misinformation appears in textbooks and resource books

misinformation in a variety of ways. Celce-Murcia, Brinton, and Goodwin (1996: 210)
classify correction as part of a larger category of contrastive stress, as in
(10). The words in regular capital letters are syllables with focus; the bold
capital letters signify emphatic focus.
(10) Alice: It’s cold.
Betty: It’s not cold.
Alice: It is cold.
Betty: Come on … It’s R eally not THAT cold.
Contrastive stress, a concept which is intuitively appealing to native
speakers of English, and which makes sense to students almost
immediately, is poorly defined, and includes a large number of di¤erent
phenomena, such as explicit contrast, comparison, and contradiction.
However, contrast also appears to be a good way to describe many uses of
focus. In (11), B’s appropriate response to A’s first utterance, with focus
on got, is a repetition of A’s words. From a learner’s perspective, there is
no new information. Got is in focus because it contrasts with part of a
larger assumption of A’s utterance.
(11) A: We must get some flowers.
B: I’ve got some flowers.
Bradford (1988: 9)
Thus, although contrast may be a wide-ranging explanation for focus
placement, it is more useful to teach specific uses of contrast, such as
correction, rather than contrast in general.

Activity 3: Spokesperson and aide

In this activity, adapted slightly from Kenworthy (1988), one speaker
corrects erroneous statements made by another. Two students take the
roles of a company spokesperson and an aide preparing for a public
briefing. They each receive cue cards with di¤erent information. The
spokesperson practices his or her presentation, which the aide politely
corrects when the information is wrong. Kenworthy states that some
rehearsal of appropriate forms (e.g. ‘Excuse me for interrupting’, etc.)
will probably be needed. Below are example cue cards, and a dialogue.

52 John M. Levis
 Spokesperson Aide
Factories closing: 3 Factories closing: 2
Jobs lost: 500 Jobs lost: 700
Managers’ jobs lost: 52 Managers’ jobs lost: 42
Decrease in costs: $300,000 Decrease in costs: $330,000
Increase in profit: $700,000 Increase in profit: $800,000

Spokesperson: We’re closing down three of our factories.

Aide: Excuse me, but it’s only two factories.
Spokesperson: This will mean the loss of five hundred jobs.
Aide: In actual fact, we think about seven hundred jobs will be
lost.
Focus in the above activity is controlled by the information on the cue
cards, but the activity is demanding. Students not only have to use focus
to correct, they also have to listen carefully enough to know which piece
of information needs to be corrected. In addition, the need for polite
forms and discourse strategies indicating disagreement brings the
activity much closer to unplanned speech.

Focus in repeated The last functional use involves focus on function words, especially
questions pronouns. This is a useful part of many common speech routines, such
as greetings and small talk, where there is a predictable focus placement.
This kind of focus placement is exemplified by the common English
greeting in (12).
(12) A: H ow are you?
B: fine. How are you?
In traditional accounts of focus, which appeal to content words and new
information, there is no satisfactory way to account for the focus of
function words on these questions. But by treating the focus placement
as a part of fixed functional routines, the simplicity of the regularity also
makes it much easier to apply in spontaneous speech than appealing to
word class and information structure. The high functional load and
predictability of these questions also make them a useful topic at an early
stage in a pronunciation course.

Activity 4: The cocktail party

This activity provides an opportunity to practice the focus shift on
repeated questions. It takes advantage of a situation in which repeated
questions are very common, when we meet someone new, or see a
somewhat unfamiliar acquaintance. The activity minimizes written
input, and places the questions in a normal conversational context.
The teacher writes common repeated questions on slips of paper, one for
each student (e.g. Where are you from? How are you? What have you been
doing?). Students walk round the room, as at an informal gathering.
When they meet another student, they begin a conversation, and one of
them asks his or her question. The other person responds, then repeats
the question with the new focus. This is followed by a response, then
additional conversation. After a short time, the teacher calls for students
to meet someone else. At the end, students may be called upon to
perform conversations.

Teaching focus for conversational use 53

 Example conversation
Person 1: Hello.
Person 2: Hello. Have you been here long?
Person 1: A little while. Have you been here long?
Person 2: No, I just got here. What’s your name?
Person 1: Tony Lancia. What’s your name?
Person 2: etc.
This activity is especially good as a follow-on to work on self-
introductions. Students usually understand the focus shift with little
trouble. This awareness makes spontaneous production of the focus
much easier for them.

Conclusion The ability to use focus is an essential skill in speaking English.

However, the traditional ways of helping students to predict focus rely
too heavily on repetition of pre-planned, written texts which can be
diªcult to apply to spontaneous speech. Minimizing the role of written
texts means that there must be alternative ways of presenting and
practicing focus, ways that take advantage of common functional uses of
language that have clear focus regularities which can be readily applied
during the course of speaking. Such alternatives are much needed by
learners as a supplement to the traditional approaches to learning focus,
and as a bridge between classroom instruction and unplanned
communication.
Revised version received March 1999

Note Gerngross, G. and H. Puchta. 1992. Creative

1 I assume that students can correctly stress
multisyllabic words, thus clearing the way for
clear use of focus. While this assumption is
open to question, I will not address the
prediction of word stress, a topic which requires
its own discussion.
2 The author is grateful to Nina Ito for this
example.
References
Bradford, B. 1988. Intonation in Context.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Celce-Murcia, M., D. M. Brinton, and J. Goodwin.
1996. Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cruttenden, A. 1990. ‘Nucleus placement and
three classes of exceptions’, in S. Ramsaran (ed.).
Studies in the Pronunciation of English: A
Commemorative Volume in Honour of A. C. Gimson.
London: Routledge.
Dalton, C. and B. Seidlhofer. 1994. Pronunciation.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dickerson, W. B. 1989. Stress in the Speech Stream.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Grammar Practice. Harlow: Longman.
Gilbert, J. 1993. Clear Speech (2nd edn.). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1967. Intonation and Grammar
in British English. The Hague: Mouton.
Jenkins, J. 1997. ‘Teaching intonation for English
as an international language: Teachability,
learnability, and intelligibility’. Speak Out! 21:
15–26.
Kenworthy, J. 1988. Teaching English
Pronunciation. London: Longmans.
The author
John Levis received his PhD from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. He is
Assistant Professor of ESL in the Department of
Foreign Languages and Literatures at North
Carolina State University. His interests include
how suprasegmentals a¤ect judgments of
intelligibility, and the integration of pronunciation
into oral communication curricula.
Email: levisjohn@netscape.net

54 John M. Levis