Plosives 0

Plosives

20 minutes

TASK

• Transcribe the extract from 'A Shocking Accident' assigned to your group.
• Find instances of allophonic variants of all the plosive sounds in your extract.
• Download this chart and complete it with the examples you have found.
• Practise reading your extract aloud

ROLES

• Transcriber

• Recorder (chart)
• Reader

GROUP 4

GROUP 2

GROUP 3

GROUP 1

'I've had a telephone call, Jerome. From your aunt. I'm afraid I have bad news for you.' 'Yes, sir?' 'Your father has had an accident.' 'Oh.' Mr Wordsworth looked at him with some surprise. 'A serious accident.' 'Yes, sir?' Jerome worshipped his father: the verb is exact. As man re-creates God, so Jerome recreated his father.

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''I'm afraid your father was very seriously hurt indeed.' 'In fact, Jerome, he died yesterday. Quite without pain.' 'Did they shoot him through the heart?' 'Nobody shot him, Jerome. A pig fell on him.' An inexplicable convulsion took place in the nerves of Mr Wordsworth's face; it really looked for a moment as though he were going to laugh.

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It never occurred to him at his preparatory school that the circumstances of his father's death were comic - they were still part of the mysteries of life. It was later, when he told the story to his best friend, that he began to realize how it affected others. Naturally after that disclosure he was known, rather unreasonably, as Pig.

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It seemed to Jerome that there were two possible methods - the first led gently up to the accident, so that by the time it was described the listener was so well prepared that the death came really as an anti-climax. The chief danger of laughter in such a story was always surprise. When he rehearsed his method, Jerome began boringly enough.

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