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Four Corners: I speak, you guess

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Four Corners: I speak, you guess

SUBJECTS:  English, History

YEARS:  9–10


Listen to the voices of a small selection of students from around Australia to see if you can guess where they live.

Is place the most important thing that shapes their language, or are there other factors that influence how people speak?


Things to think about

  1. 1.Do you think that the way you speak is typical of the way others of your age living in your local area speak? Would you have to go far to find a student whose spoken English was significantly different from yours? In what ways would you expect them to sound different?
  2. 2.To what extent does the small sample of voices represented in the clip prove, or disprove, the notion that people's use of English varies according to where they live? Which of the voices sound similar? In what ways? Which voices demonstrate the greatest contrast? How are they different?
  3. 3.Listen carefully to each of the six spoken texts. Identify the characteristics of each person's speech; eg, variety in tone, grammar, pronunciation of all letters in words, emphasis on vowels, speed, nasal quality. Can you make any generalisations that link people's speech to where they live? What else might influence the way people speak? What other voices might be used in a clip like this to prove your point?
  4. 4.

    Record your own voice as you speak for one minute about an event that you've recently attended. Identify the characteristics of your speech. Do you speak in a similar way to any of the people in the clip? Repeat the activity using a recording of one of your friends. What similarities and differences do you notice?



Date of broadcast: 1 Aug 1975


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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