How to Pronounce English Words — Word Stress in English

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English,

and this week we're going to focus on how to speak clearly in English using

words stress correctly.

This is one of the most important parts of English pronunciation.

Many of my students worry about speaking English clearly and they're afraid that

their accent makes it hard for other people to understand them.

But most of the time the problem isn't really accent.

It's word stress.

Word stress is essential for sounding natural in English.

It's part of our natural rhythm. When we speak in this lesson today,

you're going to learn exactly what words stress is, how you can use it,

and at the end I'm going to share with you how to pronounce some of the most

challenging words in English and be sure that you're doing it correctly.

[inaudible]

So let's start with what exactly is word stress and why is it so important?

Native speakers' ears are trained to listen for very specific sounds,

and if a sound in a word isn't correct,

if it's not stressed in the right way,

it means that either they don't understand the word correctly or they don't

understand it at all. Now to understand words stress,

there's one thing you must know.

You have to know what a syllable is.

All of our words have much smaller parts and these are called syllables.

A word might have only one syllable like dog,

cat, walk, drive, desk.

Even words like strengths or stretched have only one syllable.

They're longer words,

but there's just one syllable syllables are all about the different sounds of a

word, not the length of a word.

And here is a really great trick for knowing each syllable in a word,

syllables are usually made up of one vowel sound and our chin drops every time

you use a syllable. I want you to do something with me.

I want you to put your hand under your chin and I want you to say the word dog.

Dog.

Do you notice that your chin moves down one time when you say the word dog?

That's because there's only one syllable. Let's try another one.

Again,

I want you to put your hand under your chin and this time I want you to say the

word identification. If we slow this word way down,

I want you to count how many syllables are i-den-ti-fi-ca-tion.

What do you think? How many times did you feel your chin moved down?

The number should be six and that is a syllable every time your chin moves with

one of those vowel sounds, it is a part of a word, a syllable.

Now that you know what syllables are all about,

let's go back and talk about why these are so important for word stress.

In English, we do not stress every syllable in a word.

Instead we stress one syllable.

Let me show you the difference. Identification.

Identification. Do you notice that stress?

My voice goes up. It's louder and it's clear when I say -ca.

If I stressed every syllable equally,

it would sound like this: i-den-ti-fi-ca-tion.

For example, I need your identification.

That doesn't sound natural at all because it isn't natural.

We do not stress every syllable in a word.

Let's try another example.

I'm going to listen to a record today in that sentence,

I'm using record as a noun,

but this word could also be a verb and in that case I need to change which

syllable I stress. For example,

I'm going to record some music today.

Record the syllable.

Stress has changed and as a result,

native speakers immediately recognize it as a verb.

There are several words in English that can be both nouns and verbs,

but we have to be careful about how we say them.

We have to change which syllable we stress,

and I'm going to share the most important ones with you in a moment.

Now that you know what word stress is and why it's important,

it's time to figure out which syllable should you stress in a word.

And there are a few ways that you can do that and here's where I'm going to give

you a really helpful trick for those long scary words in English.

The first thing that you can do is listen to native speakers carefully and see

if you can hear which syllable is stressed in a word.

The next thing that you can do is you could use a dictionary to help you as

well. In a dictionary,

you'll always find the phonetic spelling of a word and there is an apostrophe

before the stressed syllable.

So if we look at the word refrigerator,

we can see that there's an apostrophe just before fridge refrigerator.

Now the truth is,

you don't always have time to look in a dictionary and sometimes even if you're

listening carefully,

it's hard to identify which syllable a native speaker stresses.

So I've got three tricks to help you. Number one,

for most nouns and adjectives that have two syllables,

you will stress the first syllable. Let's look at some examples.

Climate, parent, knowledge,

flippant, spacious, basic,

object. If you noticed in each of those examples,

I said the first syllable louder, longer,

higher and clear,

and a great way for you to practice is simply listen to me say those and

immediately repeat what you hear. After you do that.

Let's move on to rule number two.

We just talked about nouns and adjectives with two syllables,

but now let's talk about verbs with two syllables.

Most of the time with verbs that have two syllables,

you're going to stress the second syllable. Let's look at some examples.

Become, embrace,

reflect, forgive, adore,

object. Did you notice that last one?

An object is a noun,

to object is a verb and we've switched which syllable gets stressed.

An object, to object.

This is exactly like that example of to record and a record that we talked about

earlier,

so let's look at a few more examples of words that could be verbs or nouns and

how we need to change the stress on increase to increase,

decrease to decrease,

a refund to refund,

an invite to invite,

a project to project. Again,

I want you to practice by listening to those and repeating what you hear.

It's a great way to develop that pattern and become more familiar,

more comfortable with word stress. Now.

If you want more examples just like that,

I've got those for you in the online lesson and you'll find a link just below

this video. But now let's move on to the third and final rule today,

which is how to identify which syllable to stress and really long words like I'm

going to say each of these words out loud and I want you to listen carefully to

see if you notice any patterns with these words.

Administration, exploitation,

communication, interruption,

accusation, intervention,

abbreviation,

extension in comprehension. All right?

What did you notice?

Did you find a pattern of which syllable I said louder,

longer, higher and clear.

Do you notice that all of these words end with the sound -tion/-sion:

incomprehension

administration,

exploitation interruption?

They all have the -tion/-sion sound and if you listen carefully,

I'm stressing the syllable just before -tion/-sion.

Listen carefully. Administration,

interruption communication,

exploitation in comprehension,

stressing the right syllable,

and those longer words will ensure that you're communicating much more clearly

and that you sound more natural in English. Now I'm going to test you.

I want you to choose a word from this list. Create a sentence,

share your sentence with me in the comments below,

but I want you to tell me which syllable in that word that you should stress.

Now, if you found this video helpful to you, be sure to give it a thumbs up,

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confident English lesson.

I've also got a playlist available for you with additional lessons on how to

sound more natural and speak clearly in English. With that,

thank you so much for joining me.

Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time for your Confident English

lesson.