The upside of upspeak
If you Google “upspeak” you will find that it gets a pretty bad rap (that means, people don’t like it and criticize it). Some say that it sounds unprofessional, that you should avoid it if you want to make a good impression, especially in work settings or on job interviews. But I think that a little bit of upspeak can actually make you sound much more like a native English speaker, especially if you’re young (let’s say, under 40).
What is upspeak? It’s also called uptalk, rising inflection, upward inflection, or high rising intonation. It basically means that speakers use a rising intonation after declarative clauses within a sentence, and standard falling intonation at the end of the sentence.
In other words, when you come to the end of a sentence, you will almost always use falling intonation if it’s a statement and rising intonation if it’s a question. In this example, I’ll say the same thing, first as a statement of fact and then as a question.
He’s going to work today.
In upspeak, you will use the standard falling intonation at the end of a statement. But within the sentence itself, you may choose to end phrases or clauses with a rising intonation. I’ll give you an example in a moment.
Why do I like upspeak? Mainly because so many Americans use it, and if you’re taking a speaking test like TOEFL, it will make you sound more natural, especially when answering the independent questions (One and Two).
Let’s take this imaginary TOEFL Speaking Question 1.
After a tiring day at school or work, most people like to relax. What activity, ritual, or practice do you use to help you relax when you are tired and need to relax? Use specific examples and details in your response.
Here’s my response using standard inflection.
And here’s my response mixing in a little bit of upspeak.
You don’t have to overdo the upspeak. And in TOEFL questions where you’re being asked to summarize a lecture or synthesize the ideas in a text with those in a lecture, it may not be appropriate to use upspeak. Upspeak tends to make you sound less authoritative and more tentative. In other words, you may sound like you’re not sure of what you’re saying. But when you’re trying to capture a native-like, conversational tone in your response, there’s definitely an upside (an advantage) to upspeak.
How to practice? Just listen to the intonation patterns of a young American YouTuber … I guarantee you’ll hear plenty of upspeak. Or try repeating the conversations you hear in practice TOEFL conversations for Questions 3 and 5 (go to one of the Chinese websites with TPOs to hear them).
