Lesson Plan

Learning Pronunciation: Sentence Stress

Designed for: High School Learners

Tutor: Md. Abdul Halim

Contact:

Objectives:

To provide learners with a general idea of Sentence Stress, its importance and how it functions in speech.

Classroom Methodology: The teaching will take place interactively with the participation from both the learners and teacher. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method will be followed to make the teaching fruitful. Classroom activities will include a warm up session, presentation and discussion.

Sentence Stress in English

Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you 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.

Rules for Sentence Stress in English: Most sentences have two types of word:

01. Content words : the key words of a sentence that carry the meaning or sense. E.g. come, go, learn, hear, involve, etc.

02. Structure words : small, simple words that make the sentence correct grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or "structure". E.g. he, we, they, on, onto, at, etc.

If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand the sentence. But if you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not understand the sentence.

The basic rules of sentence stress are:

01. Content words are stressed

02. Structure words are unstressed

The following tables 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 Buy, sell, come, leave, teach, make

Nouns Bus, music, Bela, school, lesson

Adjectives Bad, interesting, amazing, boring

Adverbs Quickly, loudly, furiously

Negative auxiliaries Don’t, aren’t, can’t

Structure words – unstressed

Words for correct grammar Example

Pronouns He, we, they, I

Prepositions On, at, up, into

Articles A, an, the

Conjunctions And, but, because

Auxiliary verbs Do, be, have, can, must, should

Exceptions:

The above rules are for what is called "neutral" or normal stress. But sometimes we can stress a word that would normally be only a structure word, for example to correct information. Look at the following dialogue:

"They've been to Mongolia, haven't they?"

"No, THEY haven't, but WE have.

Note also that when "be" is used as a main verb, it is usually unstressed (even though in this case it is a content word).

Sentence stress and meaning:

Spoken English can better be understood by understanding sentence stress correctly. When you highlight or exaggerate a key word in a spoken sentence, you can really change the understanding for the listener.

For example, here is a sentence which has 7 words, putting stress each time on different word can really change its meaning: (word stress is underlined)

I didn’t say he stole the money (I, myself)

I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe you got wrong I didn’t say it)

I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe hinted but not SAID)

I didn’t say he stole the money (someone else might have)

I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe he kept it)

I didn’t say he stole the money (talking about PARTICULAR money)

I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe something else)

Mastery use of sentence stress can really make you a good native like speaker. It surely does add rhythm when you speak. But over exaggeration can result in derailed meaning.