What is intonation?
Intonation and stress are closely linked. In fact it's impossible to dissociate them. They go hand in hand.Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say, the way the voice rises and falls when speaking, in other words the music of the language.
Just as words have stressed syllables, sentences have regular patterns of stressed words. In addition, the voice tends to rise, fall or remain flat depending on the meaning or feeling we want to convey (surprise, anger, interest, boredom, gratitude, etc.). Intonation therefore indicates the mood of the speaker.
There are two basic patterns of intonation in English: falling intonation and rising intonation.
In the following examples a downward arrow (➘) indicates a fall in intonation and an upward arrow (➚) indicates a rise in intonation.
Again, these are not rules but patterns generally used by native speakers of English. Just remember that content words are stressed, and intonation adds attitude or emotion.