Hi everyone and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation

podcast. My name is Mandy and this is our 199th episode. Most of you know that intonation,

or the up and down or rise and fall of pitch, can signal

that a speaker has just asked a question.

But question intonation patterns are not as straightforward as you might think.

First, there are all those different kinds of questions, such as yes-no questions,

W-H questions, choice questions, declarative questions, tag questions, and more.

Today I'm going to talk about choice questions.

This is a lesson from our rhythm and intonation book, which covers the intonation patterns of all the question types I just listed.

Choice questions are questions that include a list of options.

It can be as few as two options, such as, could I get you a cup of coffee or tea?

Or many options.

Could I get you some juice, water, coffee, tea, or maybe some hot chocolate?

For now, let's keep it simple and look at how we use intonation and choice questions when

there are only two options listed. This was the, could I get you a cup of coffee or tea question.

I'm going to repeat the question using two different intonation patterns.

See if you can hear the difference between them.

Listen specifically to the words coffee and tea.

Could I get you a cup of coffee or tea? Could I get you a cup of coffee or tea? Could I get you a cup of coffee or tea? In the first

example, I raised my pitch on the word coffee and dropped it on tea. I'll say it again. Could I get

you a cup of coffee or tea? In the second example, I didn't change the pitch on the word coffee, and then I used a rising pitch on the word tea.

Here it is to listen to again.

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