Syllables Small words
such as 'cup', 'red' and 'now' each consist of only
one syllable. Every syllable contains a single vowel
or vowel sound (with a few rare exceptions). So words
such as 'raining' (rain - ing), 'harder' (har- der)
and 'foggy' (fog-gy) each have two syllables, and 'impressive'
(im-press-ive) and 'partition' (par-ti-tion) each contain
three syllables.
What is Word Stress? Word stress is
the emphasis given to a particular syllable within a
word in order to allow rapid and accurate communication.
In short a stressed syllable is louder than an unstressed
syllable, but it has other features too, in fact there
are five features in total applied to a stressed syllable:
1) Louder (imPRESSive)
2) Longer (im p-r-e-s-s ive)
3) Change in Pitch (usually higher
than surrounding syllables)
4) Clearer - the stressed vowel sound
is more pure.
5) Uses larger facial movements (particularly
the jaw and lips)
Why is Word Stress important? Not all
languages use word stress, in French for example every
syllable is given equal emphasis. In English, because
we use stress, even if we dont hear the word clearly
we can still understand the word because of the position
of the stress within the word. By placing the stress
on the wrong syllable we make the words difficult to
hear and understand.
Suppose you are talking to a friend
over the telephone, and they say 'the cloth was very
expensive'. The word 'expensive' is stressed as follows;
'exPENsive'. If they had stressed a
different syllable you may not be able to tell whether
they were saying 'expensive' or 'extensive' and as such
you dont know if the cloth cost a lot of money, or if
there was lots of cloth.
Rules We now know what word stress is,
and why it is important, but how do we know where to
place the stress in the words we use. Most native English
speakers do not even know the rules which apply, and
yet they are still able to stress each word correctly.
This is because we all learn how to use our language
from 'experts' (parents, grandparents, teachers) and
we can hear how they use stress, it is then simply a
case of reproducing the sounds they make. This is by
far the best way for you to improve your word stress,
but there are some simple rules to help you understand
the process:
1) One word has only ONE
stress, if you hear two stresses then you hear two words.
2) We stress vowels and not consonants.
