Dorset Accent listening exercise

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Listening Exercise

The Sound of Dorset

aims:

• You can follow spoken text despite differences in accents
  
• You can retain chunks of language of different lengths for shorter periods of time

• You learn about the development of British and Dutch accents.

Which British accents do you know?

What is an accent?

Have you ever done phonetics?

Phonetics is defined as the study of the sounds of human speech using the mouth, throat, nasal and sinus cavities, and lungs. ... An example of phonetics is how the letter "b" in the word "bed" is spoken - you start out with your lips together.

The Sound of Dorset

• Listen to the first 4 minutes of this Podcast about a Dorset accent. 

• Answer the following questions in Dutch:

- What is a county?

- What does 'rather than' mean?

- What makes Kate Winslet good at learning a new accent?

- What does 'Dumpsy' mean and who would say this?

The Sound of Dorset 1

What is a county?

What does 'rather than' mean?

What makes Kate Winslet good at learning a new accent? How did you find your answer?

What does 'Dumpsy' mean and who would say this? How did you find your answer?

Before we listen to the second part, let's dicuss two things:

• What can be characteristics of an accent
• Different ways of listening to a text

What distinguishes the Groningen accent from what we know as ABN?

Listening for gist

Imagine you are a superhero flying in the sky. From that height, it is possible to see what the entire area is like, how densely populated it is, the kind of houses in each area.

When listening, it is also possible to get the ‘whole picture’ but with one crucial difference: information comes in a sequence. And in that sequence of information, there are content words (the nouns, adjectives and verbs) that can help you form that picture. We often call this listening for gist.

For example, the words 'food', 'friends', 'fun', 'park' and 'sunny day' have their own meanings, but when you hear the words in sequence, they help form the context of a picnic.

The Sound of Dorset

• Listen to the next 3 minutes of this podcast about a Dorset accent. 
• You won't have to answer questions during listening, but you will be asked to answer some questions on your general understanding of the conversation afterwards. 
• Strategic suggestion: try to fully concentrate on understanding this spoken text as a whole. Do not take notes. Listen for gist.

The Sound of Dorset 2

How would someone from Dorset pronounce the word horse differently from someone who speaks Standard British English?

Do you think 'multicultural British English' is a good name for the accent(s) it refers to? And why?

I found this listening exercise:

Way too easy. I understood everything and the questions were easy.

Easy to understand but (some of) the questions were difficult.

Hard to understand but the questions were doable.

I couldn't understand the text and the questions were hard.

Another option not mentioned here.

Why do you think we did this listening exercise? What is the importance of doing this in English class?

Do you agree that a 'Multicultural Dutch' accent has developed in our country?

0100

Multicultural Dutch is an up and coming accent / dialect in our country. 

- In groups of 3 discuss and try to find evidence for and/or against  this argument.

- You can do research online but also take into account your own personal experience with this - think of accents you hear in school, in music or on TV for example.

Multicultural Dutch is an up and coming accent our country. 

Assignment - choose one of the following:

• Prepare a short presentation of your findings (at least 5 minutes) - you need to have some audio/visual support like a Powerpoint
• Write a song or poem using what you think is Multicultural Dutch - at least 8 lines; you must be able to explain why and how you wrote the song or poem using these words / phrases.
• Record an audio session of at least 4 minutes in which you discuss the matter as a group and maybe even give some examples
  (MAKE SURE YOU CAN SUPPORT YOUR FINDINGS)
• You will have some time to work on this now and the next lesson. You must present this to the class on Tuesday 12 October.