Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English, especially when spoken fast.
Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat". You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain words within a sentence.
Most sentences have two types of word:
content words
structure words
Content words are the key words of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense.
Structure words are not very important words. They are small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically.
If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand the sentence.
SELL
CAR
GONE
FRANCE
Imagine that you receive this telegram message:
Will
you
SELL
my
CAR
because
I’ve
GONE
to
FRANCE
SELL
my
CAR
I’ve
GONE
to
FRANCE
2
1
3
1
Will
you
SELL
my
CAR
because
I’ve
GONE
to
FRANCE
RULES FOR SENTENCE STRESS IN ENGLISH
The basic rules of sentence stress are:
content words are stressed
structure words are unstressed
the time between stressed words is always the same