Which word to stress in a sentence - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

English students often learn syllable and word stress rules before venturing into sentence stress. This is because sentence stress rules are far more variable and complex, while the rules for correct intonation in English generally stay the same. To demonstrate the differences, let’s look at a few different examples of stress in English.

Syllable Stress vs. Sentence Stress

When you learn how to pronounce different vowel and consonant sounds, you must also learn how to stress different parts of a word correctly. Stress is just another way to say “emphasize.” This means that some parts of a word are stronger (and slightly louder) than others. Here are a few examples:

Away (pronounced: a-WAY)
Delicious (pronounced: de-LI-cious)
Anticipate (pronounced: an-TI-ci-PATE)
Communication (pronounced: comm-un-i-CA-tion)
Autobiography (pronounced: au-to-bi-O-gra-phy)

Some longer words have a primary stressed syllable and one or more secondary stressed syllables. The primary stressed syllable is always stronger than the secondary stressed syllable, while both are stronger than unstressed syllables. Be sure to check out our guide on stressed and unstressed syllables to learn more about using proper English intonation.

Sentence stress refers to the words in a sentence that get the most emphasis. While common sayings and phrases usually have unchanging sentence stress rules, you can emphasize different words in a sentence to create new meanings. For example, let’s look at the common saying: I told you so!

The most common way to say this phrase is to put the primary stress on “told” and the secondary stress on “so,” like this:

I TOLD you SO!

However, you could also change the implicit meaning of the phrase by emphasizing “I.” By doing this, you will stress the fact that you (the speaker) were the one who told them (the listener) about something.

Which words should you stress in a sentence?

So, how can you know which words to stress in a sentence? Again, there are no hard-and-fast sentence stress rules, but there are some general principles that will help you use stress properly when speaking in English. You can often tell which words should be stressed based on the parts of speech and where the words fall in a sentence.

Content words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and main verbs) are usually stressed.
Function words (determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions) are usually unstressed unless you want to emphasize their role(s) in a sentence.
Question words (who, what, when, where, why, and how) are usually unstressed unless you want to emphasize their role(s) in a sentence.
Subject pronouns (I, You, He, She, We, They) are usually unstressed, while object pronouns (me, you, him, her, us, them) are usually stressed.

Sentence Stress in a Statement

Pronoun	Main Verb	Adverb	Preposition	Determiner	Noun
I	ran	quickly	to	the	desk.
unstressed	unstressed	STRESSED (primary)	unstressed	unstressed	STRESSED (secondary)

This example denotes the natural rise and fall of the sentence. However, as previously stated, you could stress different words to alter the meaning:

I ran quickly to the desk. (emphasizes who is doing the running)
I ran quickly to the desk. (emphasizes what action is being done)
I ran quickly to the desk. (emphasizes the way in which you ran, but does not fundamentally change the meaning of the sentence)
I ran quickly to the desk. (inappropriate sense stress, but emphasizes the direction in which you ran)
I ran quickly to the desk. (inappropriate sense stress, but emphasizes that it was a specific desk)
I ran quickly to the desk. (emphasizes the object or location to which you ran)

Sentence Stress in a Question

Pronoun	Modal Verb	Main Verb	Preposition	Determiner	Noun
Who	will	come	to	the	party?
unstressed	unstressed	STRESSED (primary)	unstressed	unstressed	STRESSED (secondary)

Like the previous example, the sentence stress here also denotes the natural rise and fall of the word combination. However, you could still ask this question six different ways to convey six slightly different meanings:

Who will come to the party? (you want to know who the party attendees are)
Who will come to the party? (you want to know who will definitely be attending the party)
Who will come to the party? (you want to know who will attend the party, but this form does not change the standard meaning of the question)
Who will come to the party? (inappropriate sense stress, but emphasizes the location of the party)
Who will come to the party? (inappropriate sense stress, but emphasizes which party you’re talking about)
Who will come to the party? (you want to emphasize the party, possibly in contrast to a separate event)

Sentence Stress and Intonation in English

If you couldn’t already tell, sentence stress is often linked to the way our voices rise and fall (intonation) while speaking. The natural rise and fall in pitch usually determines which words are stressed and unstressed. This is why the two example sentences above have similar structures. They are both examples of falling intonation.

In American English, there are two basic types of intonation: rising intonation and falling intonation. Falling intonation is far more common. When you speak with falling intonation, the pitch of your voice starts high and gets lower by the end of the sentence. More often than not, sentences with falling intonation use stressed verbs and objects. For example:

I saw a crab at the beach.
They never return my calls.
Frank is a responsible person.
My dad doesn’t like to wash the dishes.

Alternatively, rising intonation occurs when the pitch of your voice starts lower and gets higher at the end of the sentence. This type of intonation is less common, but you can use it when you want to ask a Yes/No question or when you want to express a negative emotion, like anger. Similarly, the stress often falls on verbs and objects, though this can vary depending on the meaning you want to convey. Here are some examples:

Are you sure?
Do you want to go to the park?
You’re so mean!
I don’t want to talk to you!

What is sense stress?

You might have heard of sense stress, which is very similar to the concept of sentence stress. Sense stress simply refers to the use of stress on different words to convey different meanings. Thus, sense stress is a form of sentence stress. Usually, people refer to appropriate or inappropriate sense stress. Appropriate sense stress sounds natural and correctly conveys the meaning of a sentence. Here are some examples of appropriate sense stress:

How many HAMBURGERS should we get?
What TIME is it?
He ANSWERED the phone.
They did NOT want to go swimming.

Alternatively, inappropriate sense stress sounds unnatural and conveys strange or incorrect meanings. Here are a few examples:

Where do you want to eat?
Did you go to the doctor?
I never go to the supermarket by myself.
She was watching a movie when the guests arrived.

Conclusion

Sentence stress is an element of English that can be difficult to grasp, especially for beginner or even intermediate learners. However, with practice, you can use stress to accurately express yourself. With time, you’ll find that sense and sentence stress are some of the best ways to get your point across to other English speakers!

If you’d like to hear native English speakers using sentence stress, be sure to subscribe to the Magoosh Youtube channel!

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This time I am going to draw your attention to some delicate item of the English language. To begin with, you’ve got to remember that each time you learn new vocabulary, it is important to make sure you

know the following:

• the meaning of the word you’re learning;
• collocation (which other words commonly go with it);
• “currency” — whether or not the word is restricted to certain situations or can be used widely;
• its spelling;
• and pronunciation.

Let’s take the word “ DESPERATE“.

Meaning	— feeling that you have no hope and are ready to do anything to change the situation you are in (desperate with sth) ; — needing or wanting something very much (desperate for sth, desperate to do sth ); — a desperate situation is very bad or serious.
Collocation	desperate attempt/bid/effort; desperate battle/struggle/fight
“Currency”	quite frequently used (especially by pessimists)
Spelling	desperate (not disparate or whatever else)
Pronunciation	/ˈdes.pər.ət/

Although the last point is crucially important, very often it’s neglected by students and even by teachers. There are two interesting features of English pronunciation which give you the key to understanding and being understood and these are STRESS and INTONATION. Today we’ll start by considering WORD and SENTENCE STRESS (наголос).

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that in English, certain words have stress within a sentence, and certain syllables have stress within a word. And it is this stress that allows our ears to understand the meaning and also to pick up the important parts of the sentence. We give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length). English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

What is word stress?

In multi-syllable words (багатоскладових словах) the stress falls on one of the syllables while the other syllables tend to be spoken over quickly. For example, try saying the following words to yourself: qualify, banana, understand. All of them have 3 syllables and one of the syllables in each word will sound louder than the others: so, we get QUAlify, baNAna and underSTAND. (The syllables indicated in capitals are the stressed syllables). What makes a syllable stressed? It is usually higher in pitch (the level of the speaker’s voice). It’s pronounced louder. And finally, it’s longer in duration.
Stress can fall on the first, middle or last syllables of words, as is shown here:

Ooo	oOo	ooO
SYLlabus	enGAGEment	usheRETTE
SUBstitute	baNAna	kangaROO
TECHnical	phoNEtic	underSTAND

In order for one syllable to be perceived as stressed, the syllables around it need to be

unstressed.

Have another look at the groups of words in the table above. In the word SYLLABUS, we said the first syllable was stressed. This logically implies that the final two are unstressed. Also, in the word BANANA, the first and third syllables are unstressed, and the middle one is stressed. In order to improve your pronunciation, focus on pronouncing the stressed syllable clearly. However, don’t be afraid to «mute» (not say clearly) the other unstressed vowels.

But how do we recognize where the stress falls? Well, there are a couple of ideas:

1. Try putting this word in the end of a short sentence, and saying it over a few times: for example, It’s in the syllabus; He had a prior engagement; I don’t understand.

2. Try saying this word as though you have been completely taken by surprise: for example, SYLlabus? baNAna? kangaROO?

In dictionaries we spot the stress with help of a mark before the stressed syllable like in the following examples: /bəˈnɑː.nə/, /ɪnˈgeɪdʒ.mənt/, /ˌʌn.dəˈstænd/.

The table below is a kind of a ‘rough guide’ to stressed syllables. Though these are rather tendencies than rules, since they only tell us what is true most of the time, and it is always possible to find exceptions.

In longer words with many syllables, there can be a primary stress and a secondary stress. So the primary stress would be the highest in pitch and perhaps the longest, but there might also be another syllable that is important. For example, the word EMBARRASSMENT (ɪmˈbær.ə.smənt ).So there it is the last two syllables that are not stressed. And it is the second syllable that is stressed. But the first syllable is also somewhat important and higher in pitch than the last two. So, the first syllable there has a secondary stress, and the second syllable has the primary stress. The last two syllables are unstressed.

There are several ways of indicating stress when it comes to making notes as you are learning a new vocabulary item. And I strongly advise you to use one of them. For this, of course, you will need to consult your dictionary all the time.

What is sentence stress?

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 sentence there will be particular words that carry more “weight” or “volume” (stress) than others. Believe me, we do convey a lot of meaning through how much stress we place in a sentence and which word the stress is on.
Consider the following example:

I did not say you stole my red hat.

At the moment, nothing is particularly stressed. The meaning seems fairly obvious. But what if some stress is placed on the first word — I:

I did not say you stole my red hat.

Then the meaning contains the idea that someone else said it, not me. Stress the second and third word and you get another shade of meaning:

I did not say you stole my red hat. (Strong anger and denial of the fact.)
I did not say you stole my red hat.
I did not say you stole my red hat. (But I implied it that you did. Did you?)
I did not say you stole my red hat (I wasn’t accusing you. I know it was someone else)
I did not say you stole my red hat. (I said you did something else with it, or maybe borrowed it.)
I did not say you stole my red hat. (I meant that you stole someone else’s red hat)
I did not say you stole my red hat. (I said that you stole my blue hat.)
I did not say that you stole my red hat. (I said that you stole my red bat. You misunderstood my pronunciation)

Analyzing this way, you can see how important stress is in English. Now, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we do not stress. 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. The example below gives us three content words – LIVES, HOUSE and CORNER:

he LIVES in the HOUSE on the CORNER.

These three content words carry the most important ideas in the sentence. Unstressed words tend to be smaller words which we need in order to make our language hold together. They help the sentence “function” and for this reason they are called function words.

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	Auxiliary Verbs	can, should, must
Demonstratives	this, that, those	Verb “to be”	is, was, am
Question Words	who, which, where

Now, say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes:

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.

Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. Now, try speaking this sentence aloud:

He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn’t have to do any homework in the evening.

Time required? Probably about 5 seconds. But the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence?! How’s it possible? The thing is that Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, it has the same number of stressed words – 5. From this example, you can see that you needn’t worry about pronouncing every word clearly to be understood. You should however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly.

You will soon find that you can understand and communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn’t understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English. I hope this ode to the importance of stress in English will help you to improve your understanding and speaking skills :-).

Now watch the videos to review what we’ve learned this time:

Ми розглянули правила та приклади постановки наголосів в англійській мові. Щоб дізнатися більше про англійську граматику, читайте інші публікації в розділі Grammar!

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When a little stress is a good thing…

How do students of English learn to speak like native speakers? Everyone knows that pronunciation is important, but some people forget about sentence stress and intonation. The cadence and rhythm of a language are important for fluency and clarity. Languages of the world vary greatly in word and sentence stress—many languages stress content words (e.g., most European languages) while others are tonal (e.g., Thai) or have little to no word stress (e.g., Japanese). Practicing sentence stress in English helps students speak more quickly and naturally. Fortunately for teachers, students usually enjoy activities like the one in the worksheet below! After one of our subscribers asked us for resources on sentence stress this week, I thought I’d share some tips and a worksheet that you can use in class.

Sentence stress occurs when we say certain words more loudly and with more emphasis than others. In English, we stress content words because they are essential to the meaning of the sentence. In general, shorter words or words that are clear from the context don’t get stressed.

Content words include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Negative words such as not or never also get stressed because they affect the meaning of the sentence. Modals, too, can change the meaning of a sentence. Here is a list of words to stress in an English sentence:

nouns (people, places, things)
verbs (actions, states)
adjectives (words that modify nouns)
adverbs (words that modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, or entire sentences)
negative words (not, never, neither, etc.)
modals (should, could, might, etc., but not will or can)
yes, no, and auxiliary verbs in short answers (e.g., Yes, she does.)
quantifiers (some, many, no, all, one, two, three, etc.)
Wh-Question words (what, where, when, why, how, etc.—note that what is often unstressed when speaking quickly because it’s so common)

Not to Stress

Some words don’t carry a lot of importance in an English sentence. Short words such as articles, prepositions, and conjunctions don’t take stress. Pronouns don’t usually get stressed either because the context often makes it clear who we’re talking about. The Be verb and all auxiliary verbs don’t carry much meaning—only the main verb does. Here is a list of words that shouldn’t be stressed in an English sentence:

articles (a, an, the)
prepositions (to, in, at, on, for, from, etc.)
conjunctions (and, or, so, but, etc.)
personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, etc.)
possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, etc.)
Be verb (am, is, are, was, were, etc.)
auxiliary verbs (be, have, do in two-part verbs or questions)
the modals will and be going to (because they’re common, and the future tense is often clear from context)
the modal can (because it’s so common)

Examples

Model the following examples for your students and have them repeat after you. The words (or syllables when the word has more than one) that should be stressed are in bold.

The kids are at the park.
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Why aren’t you doing your homework?
He bought a red car for his daughter.
I am Brazilian.
We are not familiar with this new computer program.
The athlete ran quickly and won the competition.
She does not know the answer.
I don’t know the answer, either.
We aren’t sure.
I’ve never heard of that before, but it makes sense.
They’ll ask the teacher for help.
Some people prefer Macs, but many others prefer PCs.
She is going to study tonight.
I can speak French.
I can’t speak Japanese.
Yes, I can. / No, I can’t.

Practice

When practicing sentence stress, whether in the examples above, the worksheet below, or your own activity, encourage reductions such as wanna, gonna, whaddaya, etc. These reductions will make it easier for your students to speak more quickly and will help them recognize when native speakers use these reduced forms. Plus, they’re fun to say!

Sentence Stress – Grammar & Usage Resources

Worksheet Answers

boys, playing, video game
computer, broken
Where, going, after, class
doesn’t,like, cake
writing, test, long, time
prefer, coffee, tea
doing, tonight (optional: What /encourage reduced pronunciation of Whaddaya)
brother, wants, buy, red, car (demonstrate wanna for the subjects I, you, we, they, and plural count nouns)
come, party (encourage reduced pronunciation of gonna)
said, has, dog, not, cat

Here’s hoping your students don’t get too stressed!

Tanya

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Hi,

Which word(s) should be stressed in this sentence?
It is a white shell.

Is it like this:
It is a white shell.

But if shell is mentioned in a preceding sentence, like this below, which word(s) should be stressed?
Sam has a shell. It is a white shell.

Would you stress the words like these:
Sam has a shell. It is a white shell.

Thank you very much.

You are right in that usually important and new items come at the end of sentences, and those usually receive stress.

If you have a compound noun, the stress is usually at the beginning of the compound eg ‘railway station’, ‘Geography teacher’. (See stress on compound nouns)

Therefore, we say: (1) ‘The American president lives in the WHITE house’, but (2) ‘John lives in a white HOUSE’.

But if sentence (2) contrasts white with something else or is in fact the new information, the stress can be moved as you suggested.

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Correct intonation and stress are the key to speaking English fluently with good pronunciation. Intonation and stress refers to the music of the English language. Words that are stressed are key to understanding and using the correct intonation brings out the meaning. After students have learned basic consonant and vowel sounds, they should move on to learning to differentiate between individual sounds by using minimal pairs. Once they are comfortable with individual words, they should move on to intonation and stress exercises such as sentence markup. Finally, students can take the next step by choosing a focus word to help further improve their pronunciation.

The following exercise can be used by students and teachers to further help with pronunciation by focusing on the stressing content words rather than function words in the exercise below.

Intonation and Stress – Exercise Introduction

Say this sentence aloud and count how many seconds it takes.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.
Time required? Probably about 5 seconds.

Now, try speaking this sentence aloud.

He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn’t have to do any homework in the evening.
Time required? Probably about 5 seconds.

Wait a minute the first sentence is much shorter than the second sentence!

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance
He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn’t have to do any homework in the evening

You are only partially right!

This simple exercise makes a very important point about how we speak and use English. Namely, English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length).

Many speakers of syllabic languages don’t understand why we quickly speak, or swallow, a number of words in a sentence. In syllabic languages each syllable has equal importance, and therefore equal time is needed. English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words.

Let’s look at a simple example: the modal verb “can”. When we use the positive form of “can” we quickly glide over the can and it is hardly pronounced.

They can come on Friday. (stressed words underlined)

On the other hand, when we use the negative form “can’t” we tend to stress the fact that it is the negative form by also stressing “can’t”.

They can’t come on Friday.

As you can see from the above example the sentence, “They can’t come on Friday” is longer than “They can come on Friday” because both the modal “can’t” and the verb “come” are stressed.

So, what does this mean for my speaking skills?

Well, first of all, you need to understand which words we generally stress and which we do not stress. Basically, stress words are considered CONTENT WORDS such as:

Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter
(most) principal verbs e.g. visit, construct
Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting
Adverbs e.g. often, carefully

Non-stressed words are considered FUNCTION WORDS such as

Determiners e.g. the, a, some, a few
Auxiliary verbs e.g. don’t, am, can, were
Prepositions e.g. before, next to, opposite
Conjunctions e.g. but, while, as
Pronouns e.g. they, she, us

Let’s return to the beginning example to demonstrate how this affects speech.

The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance . (14 syllables)
He can come on Sunday s as long as he doesn’t have to do any homework in the evening . (22 syllables)

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each sentence. From this example, you can see that you needn’t worry about pronouncing every word clearly to be understood (we native speakers certainly don’t). You should however, concentrate on pronouncing the stressed words clearly.

Now, do some listening comprehension or go speak to your native English speaking friends and listen to how we concentrate on the stressed words rather than giving importance to each syllable. You will soon find that you can understand and communicate more because you begin to listen for (and use in speaking) stressed words. All those words that you thought you didn’t understand are really not crucial for understanding the sense or making yourself understood. Stressed words are the key to excellent pronunciation and understanding of English.

I hope this short introduction to the importance of stress in English will help you to improve your understanding and speaking skills.

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