English Tips

Teaching Sentence Stress


What is “Sentence Stress”?

“Sentence Stress” need not be referred to as the particular anxiety an ESL student experiences when attempting to pronounce a particularly wordy sentence in English… Sentence Stress is actually the “music” of English, the thing that gives the language its particular “beat” or “rhythm”. In general, in any given English utterance therewill be particular words that carry more “weight” or “volume” (stress) than others. From a speaking perspective, Sentence Stress will affect the degree to which an ESL student sounds “natural”. In terms of listening, it affects how well a student can understand the utterances they hear.


What is “Word Stress”?

Whereas Sentence Stress refers to the process whereby particular words arestressed within an overall sentence, Word Stress refers to the process whereby particular syllables (or parts of words) are stressed within an overall word. In general, Sentence Stress is more of a consideration for overall fluency – Word Stress tends to have more of a phonological and morphemic importance.


Which do you teach first – Sentence Stress or Word Stress?

An attempt to teach SentenceStress should proceed any attempt to teach Word Stress. Both are areas that can be more or less picked up naturally – but Sentence Stress can be picked up and learned across all levels, whereas Word Stress requires a little more focus if students are to understand the phonological and morphemic issues involved (making it thus more appropriate at later/higher levels). Once Sentence Stress is anongoing consideration in the classroom, Word Stress can be introduced to demonstrate the significance of syllable stress on sound changes (for instance variation in the pronunciation of “y” depending on its position in a stressed or unstressed syllable). Otherwise, Word Stress should be a general pronunciation issue.


How Sentence Stress Works and Why


In any given sentence in Englishthere will be words that carry stress and others that don’t. This is not a random pattern. Stressed words carry the meaning or the sense behind the sentence, and for this reason they are called “Content Words” – they carry the content of the sentence. Unstressed words tend to be smaller words that have more of a grammatical significance – they help the sentence “function” syntactically and forthis reason they are called Function Words (NOTE: sometimes “Function Words” are referred to as “Structure Words”).

Obviously the “content” of a sentence carries more significance than the particular “way” it is put together. An easier way to think of it is that if you take out all the “function” words (without real meaning) from a sentence, the sentence will still have a certain amount ofmeaning and can be understood. Doing the opposite will remove the meaning from a sentence and render it obsolete. It is logical that the meaningful units within a sentence will carry the most significance and therefore stress.

Content Words include: (Main) Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Negative Auxiliary Verbs, Demonstratives, Question Words

Function Words include: Pronouns, Prepositions,Articles, Conjunctions, Auxiliary Verbs, (Main) Verb “to be”

Examples:


|Content Words |Function Words |
|Main Verbs |go, talk, writing |Pronouns |I, you, he ,they |
|Nouns |student, desk|Prepositions |on, under, with |
|Adjectives |big, clever |Articles |the, a, some |
|Adverbs |quickly, loudly |Conjunctions |but, and, so |
|Negative Aux. Verbs |can’t, don’t, aren’t...