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2. WORD STRESS AND SENTENCE STRESS AS THE GOLDEN KEY TO ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION.

Word stress is like a golden key to speaking and understanding English.If you do not already know about word stress, you can try to learn about it. This is one of the best ways for you to understand spoken English - especially English spoken fast.

Take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound the same when spoken? No. Because one syllable in each word is stressed (stronger than the others). This happens in all words with 2 or more syllables: teacher, japan, China, above, conversation, interesting, important, demand.

The syllables that are not stressed are "weak" or "small" or "quiet". Native speakers of English listen for the stressed syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your comprehension.

If you have an English teacher, you can ask her to help you understand word stress. Or you can try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the radio, or in films for example. Your first step is to hear and recognise it. After that, you can use it.There are two important rules about word stress:

1. 
   One word, one stress,
   
2. 
   The stress is always on a vowel
   

Word stress is an important concept for English language learners, both in terms of pronunciation and comprehension. Word stress is the verbal emphasis placed on one syllable of a word.  This occurs in every English word that has more than one syllable. It’s not always the same syllable but there are a couple of rules to be familiar with when it comes to word stress.  First, word stress is only ever on a vowel of a word; it’s never on a consonant.  Second, there is only one word stress per word. 

Word stress is an essential part of pronunciation of the English Language.  It also helps you to contextualise which version of a particular word you are hearing. For example, anthropology is the noun that refers to the study of humankind.  Anthropological is the adjective.  Though the words share a common root, the word stress, as you can see, is different in each instance.

There are some general rules about word stress that can be helpful to know.  For example most 2-syllable nouns and adjectives have word stress on the first syllable, whereas most 2-syllable verbs have word stress on the second syllable.  Keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule.Other Word Stress rules words ending in –ic, -sion, and –tion have word stress on the second syllable from the end, (or penultimate syllable.)Words ending in –cy, -ty, -phy, and –al have word stress on the third syllable from the end, (or ante-penultimate syllable.)For compound adjectives and verbs, the stress is on the second part of the word.

The best way to learn word stress is to listen carefully and make a note of patterns as you notice them.  For additional help, all dictionaries give the phonetic spelling of words.  With practice and greater awareness of word stress, you will significantly improve your grasp of the English language.

Not all words receive equal stress within a sentence in English.

Content words are stressed and content words include:

Nouns (e.g. school, station, train)

Normal verbs (e.g. run, work, speak)

Adjectives (e.g. beautiful, tall, friendly)

Adverbs (e.g. quickly, noisily, badly)

Function words are unstressed. Function words include:

Determiners (e.g. a, an, the)

Auxiliary verbs (e.g. can, have, may, will, etc.)

Conjunctions (e.g. and, but, as, etc.)

Pronouns (e.g.  you, he, she, us, it, them, etc.) 

Even if the listener does not hear some quickly pronounced function words, the meaning of the whole sentence should be clear. This is how native speakers of English communicate. Emphasis is put on the most important words. For example: "Would you like a cup of tea?" It is a general rule of English that when there is a sequence of equal stresses, the last stressed word should be the strongest, or the loudest - which in the above case would be tea. Try to imagine receiving a text message like "train delayed home late". You understand that this means: 'The train has been delayed. I will be home late".

Only content words are used in the message but the meaning is quite clear.

In English, words are stressed according to the meaning the speaker wants to convey. For example, depending in which word in the following sentence is stressed, the meaning changes:

• Are you going to the cinema tonight? (or is it someone else?)

• Are you going to the cinema tonight? (or not?)

• Are you going to the cinematonight? (or somewhere else?)

• Are you going to the cinematonight? (or another night?)

During a conversation, learners should listen for stressed content words in order to understand the meaning of the whole sentence. Likewise, they should practice stressing content words in their speech so that other people will understand them. 

Improving sentence intonation is one of the key elements in English pronunciation. The four basic types of word stress that lead to proper intonation in English are:

Tonic stress, Emphatic stress, Contrastive stress, New information stress

Tonic stress refers to the syllable in a word which receives the most stress in an intonation unit. An intonation unit has one tonic stress. It's important to remember that a sentence can have more than one intonation unit, and therefore have more than one tonic stress. Here are some examples of intonation units with the tonic stress bolded:He's waiting. He's waiting / for his friend. He's waiting / for his friend / at the station.

Generally, the final tonic stress in a sentence receives the most stress. In the above example, 'station' receives the strongest stress.

Emphatic Stress.If you decide to emphasize something, you can change the stress from the principal noun to another content word such as an adjective (big, difficult, etc.), intensifier (very, extremely, etc.) This emphasis calls attention to the extraordinary nature of what you want to emphasize. For example: That was a difficult test. - Standard statement. That was a difficult test. - Emphasizes how difficult the test was

Contrastive stress is used to point out the difference between one object and another. Contrastive stress tends to be used with determiners such as 'this, that, these and those'. For example: I think I prefer this color. Do you want these or those curtains?

Contrastive stress is also used to bring out a given word in a sentence which will also slightly change the meaning. He came to the party yesterday. (It was he, not someone else.)He walked to the party yesterday. (He walked, rather than drove.)He came to the party yesterday. (It was a party, not a meeting or something else.)He came to the party yesterday. (It was yesterday, not two weeks ago or some other time.)

When asked a question, the requested information is naturally stressed more strongly. For example:Where are you from? - I come from Seattle, in the USA.What do you want to do? - I want to go bowling. When does class begin? - The class begins at nine o'clock. Use these various types of stress to help improve your pronunciation and understandability. Normally when we say "I feel stressed" it means "I feel anxious". Stress is a kind of worried feeling about life or work. But there is another kind of stress that actually helps us understand. This other kind of stress is an accent that we make on certain syllables and words when speaking English.

In some languages, for example Japanese, people say each syllable with equal force. But in English, and some other languages, we put a big force (stress) on some syllables and no force on other syllables or words. This can make it difficult for speakers of other languages to understand English that is spoken quickly. Of course, for native speakers it is not difficult - in fact, stress actually helps native speakers understand each other. So it is very important.

Sentence stress is another golden key for speaking and understanding English. With sentence stress, some words in a sentence are stressed and other words are weak. We may look at the following sentence: We want to go. Do we say every word with the same stress or force? No. We make the important words BIG and the unimportant words small. What are the important words in this sentence? Yes, that's right: want and go

“Speaking may be the hardest part of English to master, but there’s a smaller skill hidden inside speaking that’s even more elusive: correct stress and intonation. Even advanced students may affect a flat delivery, especially when tired. Although it may be difficult to both teach and learn, these skills are vital for good conversation and possibly getting one’s point across. Repetition is key here, and luckily, there are just as many games and closed exercises to do to make the learning experience fun.

To get students’ voices warmed up, start by writing the sentence “I didn’t steal your blue wallet” on the board and ask a few students to read it aloud. From there, practice saying the sentence with a distinct stress on a different word each time; see if students can tell which word is being stressed, and how that affects the overall meaning. Encouraging students to put some emotion behind the delivery (rather than just saying one word louder than the rest) will get good laughs from the rest of the class and help everyone loosen up.” [8,103]

For a closed exercise, have a worksheet of sentences ready for each student. The teacher’s copy should have a word from each sentence underlined, and the teacher must read each sentence out loud with appropriate stress. Students will underline the stressed word or syllable, and after the teacher is done reading, the students can take turns reading the sentences aloud. In addition to stress, this exercise can also be done where students fill in the correct punctuation. For example, if one question is just the word “coffee,” students can write in a question mark if the teacher’s voice goes up, a period if not, or an exclamation point if the teacher puts excitement behind the word. For additional practice, the teacher can have one or two more sheets ready with new phrases and have a few volunteers take his/her place to do the same practice. Afterwards, the class can come together to ask questions or practice a bit more if warranted.

Telephone Conversations. For a quick game, it’s time to go back to elementary school and play telephone. Students can sit in a circle on the floor or bring their desks into a circle. The teacher will start by whispering a word or phrase with a certain stress to the first student, and so on until the last student says it aloud, and all can hear how the phrases changed (or didn’t) on its journey around the circle. Depending on how it goes, the teacher can do it again with a longer phrase or even a whole sentence or question.

Encouraging students to put some emotion behind the delivery (rather than just saying one word louder than the rest) will get good laughs from the rest of the class and help everyone loosen up.

Emotions. If some students are struggling, it’s time to get them in touch with their emotions. Simply asking them how they feel about their boss/parents/colleagues is enough to elicit a laugh, eye roll or another reaction. Have them think of one complaint (or compliment, but complaints are usually more expansive), and then it’s time to one-up each other. Have them deliver their line with emphasis. If one says, “My boss makes me work overtime every single Friday!” the next students can reply, “Your boss sounds bad, but mine makes me clean the bathroom!” and so on. Students will more than likely take this exercise and run with it, so the teacher may need to think about how much leeway to give.

Role Play. Finally, it’s time for a role-play. The dialogue can expand from the “I didn’t steal your blue wallet” sentence above, or teachers can give a different dialogue to each pair. Teachers can also assign emotions to each student to have them put as much emphasis behind their lines as possible. This exercise is bound to get loud and rowdy, but it’s a great way for students to find their voice. Some may ham it up and exaggerate, but that’s okay. It’s unlikely they’ll push it that far in the real world, and the teacher can always gently guide students the middle ground if needed.