The Centre
for Discourse Intonation Studies (CDIS) is a website for people interested
in the study and teaching of spontaneous speech. In research it is concerned
with interpreting the evidence of everyday unscripted speech, and making
such evidence available to academics, teacher-trainers, and classroom
practitioners. In teaching it aims to promote the use of everyday speech
in the teaching of listening and pronunciation in ELT.
CDIS makes innovative use of Flash movies to animate the relationship between speech and text. See Favourite Tone-units and Discourse Intonation. You need a soundcard, FlashPlayer, and (preferably) a broadband connection to view this site.
Discourse Intonation is the name given to an approach to the analysis
and teaching of speech developed at The University of Birmingham (UK)
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The originator of this approach was
the late David Brazil (1925-1995), working with Professors John Sinclair
and Malcolm Coulthard. It became influential in English Language Teaching
(ELT) in the mid 1980s and 1990s, both for teacher training (language
awareness) and classroom practice (pronunciation). This influence continues
to grow, and DI is increasingly used in academic research.
Read more here.
The
pages of CDIS
are maintained by
Richard Cauldwell