Mastering stress, intonation, pitch, loudness, vowel length, and proper phonetic pronunciation enhances verbal intelligence and the ability to speak English melodiously. Stress refers to emphasizing important syllables within words and sentences. Each English word has its own stress pattern, and incorrect stress can reduce understandability and annoy listeners. Pitch changes in English do not alter word meaning but instead indicate attitude. When emphasizing a syllable, the vowel sound should be lengthened compared to other vowels in the word. Beginning English learners can make stressed syllables louder, but it is more effective to lengthen vowel sounds rather than altering pitch or loudness. There are no set stress pattern rules in English, so carefully focusing on stress,

1. Elements of Reasonable Spoken English to Enhance Verbal Intelligence
Unlike most languages in the world which are syllable-timed languages, the spoken English
is a stressed–timed language without a set of rules for stress patterns in words which leads
to change of accent from regions to regions even within the UK.
However, melody in spoken English can be acquired by mastering the STRESS and
INTONATION. A melodious speech has the following characteristics. I has been found
through action research that a training in acquiring the following characteristics of English
language leads to enhanced verbal-linguistic intelligence.
 Pitch : rise and fall of voice
 Loudness : volume of voice
 Length: how long you hold a sound or syllable
 Vowel quality: How is the vowel said in a word with ar proper phonetic mastery
STRESS: The word ‘stress’ means to emphasize something important. In speech, it refers to
the importance of syllables in a word, (WORD STRESS) , words in a sentence ( SENTENCE
STRESS). When you first learn English, you notice that each word has many syllables.
However, each syllable does not have equal emphasis.
In English, each word has its own stress pattern. If you get the word stress wrong, it reduces
your chances of being understood properly. Listeners may be able to work out the meaning
from the context of your speech, however, frequent stressing errors in your speech will tend
to annoy listeners and give the impression that you don’t speak the language well.
PITCH: Many languages around the world are tonal, which means, the meaning of the word
changes when the pitch is different. However in English, when the pitch of the sound
changes, it does not change the meaning. Most Asian languages are tonal languages, most
European languages, Japanese and Korean are not tonal. The change in pitch changes the
intention of attitude, but not the meaning. Hence “NO” spoken in a falling or rising pitch will
mean the same.
VOWEL LENGTH: When you emphasise a syllable, it means you are making that vowel
sound longer than any other vowels within the word. Stress is often most noticeable in long
vowels. So when practising your vowels, ensure that you are making the long vowels long
when the length is needed.
LOUDNESS: When you are a beginner learning English, you can make stressed syllables
louder than normal. However it will be more effective to emphasise the relative LENGTH of
the vowel, rather than the pitch and loudness.
Rule of thumb: Stressed syllable: longer and louder, while the unstressed syllable: shorter
and softer. In English, there are no set stress pattern rules, unfortunately. This is why it is
imperative that you tune into stressing and rhythm in a very specific way.