8a Stress patterns
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PART ONE of a lesson in THREE parts. Topic: Stress in phrases and sentences. Develop your awareness of rhythm in English speech. Learn to stress words correctly and naturally. Levels: intermediate to advanced.
- What are Content Words and Function Words?
- Stress on Content Words, not on Function Word
- How to identify content words and function words?
- How to differently stress Content Words?
A key feature in pronunciation is stress.
In previous lessons, I’ve talked about word stress, but now I’d like to take time to talk about stress in phrases and then sentences.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that English “We do not stress every single word equally!” We don’t stress all the word equally because some words are more important than others.
In this lesson, I’d like to help you to understand the difference between content words and function words.
You maybe asking that this point why do I need to know about Content Words and Function Words. Well, because then you’ll know which words to stress when you speak and read aloud in English.
Knowing which words to stress does not simply make your speech sound loud more natural, knowing which words to stress can be the difference between being understood correctly and not being understood, being misunderstood* because stressing different words can create different meanings.
The objectives of our lesson are
So let’s move on now, and I will explain the difference between Content Words and Function Words. Let’s talk about the basic difference between Content Words and Function Words.
Exercise 1
As I read, I’m going to use the mouse to help you sense the rhythm of each sentence.
In this example, content words are still marked in bold, but the final content word in each thought group is highlighted in purple. That content word in purple is the one that receives the most stress in that phrase.
The bee grew annoyed. In this sentence we have three content words, bee, grew, annoyed. But, I choose not to stress ‘grew’ so that I have alternating stress. The resulting rhythm is.
Again we have more content words than words being stressed. The verb ‘brings’ is not stressed because I want to create a good rhythm in the sentence. I alternate the stress and what results is a rhythm like this.
Exercise 2
Listen to the sentence, as it is read at a slow rate and again at a fast rate. Identify which content words are stressed in each reading.
In this slower reading, all content words are stressed. [listen Jennifer].
In this faster reading, only four content words are being stressed .
The ground grows hard, and the wind grows cold.
knowing which words to stress / can be the difference between being understood correctly and not being understood, being misunderstood*
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