Teaching Dialogues through Tonic Stress-Based Sound-Scripting Method

Foreign language learning is a complex process for the non-natives of the target language. Among the four types of language skills such as listening, reading, and writing, the speaking skill is said to be the most difficult one because it involves pronunciation and intonation, let alone lexical items and grammar. A dialogue is a spoken conversation that includes at least two characters that are represented in the act of conversing. In other words, a dialogue is a piece of conversational exchange, usually brief, to be practised orally and practised and drilled in class. It must be noted that all types of learning happen with practices, and one of these practices is using dialogues in the classroom. To improve speaking skills through using dialogues as authentic texts based on native speakers is one of the best techniques to improve the learners’ pronunciation and intonation. The speaking skill can be clearly developed by listening to dialogues with audio, made by the recorded real speech of native speakers. Dialogues are like conversational training wheels, and in this regard, teaching dialogues through tonic stress-based sound-scripting method can be validated as a controlled speaking practice. The tonic stress-based sound-scripting method is based on discriminative listening, recognition of the primary stress phoneme as tonic stress, recorded dialogues by means of the voice of native speakers, and sound-scripting method. In this presentation, the recognition and teaching of the tonic stress in polysyllabic words in the dialogues of English language will be demonstrated as a listening and application method so as to display the importance of near-native like pronunciation and intonation in speech.