Word Stress

Páginas: 4 (833 palabras) Publicado: 15 de octubre de 2012
What is Word Stress?
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important) andall the other syllables very quietly.

Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound the same when spoken? No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word.And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is different.


PHO TO GRAPH

PHO TO GRAPH ER

PHO TO GRAPH IC

This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer,JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera, etCETera, etCETera

The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet. Native speakers of English listen forthe 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.

Try to hear thestress 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 very importantrules about word stress:

One word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two stresses, you have heard two words, not one word.)

The stress is always on a vowel.

Rulesfor 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
Thefollowing exemples can help you decide which words are content words and which words are

structure words:

Content words - stressed

Words carrying the meaning

Example
main verbs:========SELL,GIVE, EMPLOY
nouns:============CAR, MUSIC, MARY
adjectives:=========RED, BIG, INTERESTING
adverbs:==========QUICKLY, LOUDLY, NEVER
negative auxiliaries:==DON'T, AREN'T, CAN'T


Structure...
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