Sentence Stress

INTONATION, STRESS & RHYTHM

Using the right intonation or tone helps you to sound friendly and interested when you speak English. Stressing the right words in a sentence helps you speak with a good rhythm.
Intonation + stress = the music and rhythm of English.

Which words do I have to stress when I speak English?

Because we said that "stressing the right words in a sentence helps you speak with a good rhythm" you can guess that there are some words that need to be stressed some others that don't.
There are some general rules that can help you. We usually stress:

• Content words: those words which carry the meaning of the sentence (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
• Words containing important information: in a negative sentence the negative adverb is crucial and therefore it will be stressed.
• Words providing new information: words bringing new information to the topic will be stressed due to their relevance.

On some other occasions we can stress words that would not normally be stressed if we want to point out a different meaning or to put the emphasis somewhere different.

Have a look at the three videos below and practise with the exercises proposed: