The document outlines a lesson plan aimed at high school learners to teach them about sentence stress in English, highlighting its significance and functionality in speech. It describes the interactive teaching methodology, where content words are stressed while structure words are unstressed, and provides examples and exceptions to these rules. Ultimately, mastering sentence stress is presented as essential for improving spoken English and achieving a more native-like rhythm in speech.

1. Lesson Plan
Learning Pronunciation: Sentence Stress
Designed for: High School Learners
Tutor: Md. Abdul Halim
Contact:
Objectives:
To provide learners with a general idea of Sentence Stress, its importance and how it
functions in speech.
Classroom Methodology: The teaching will take place interactively with the
participation from both the learners and teacher. Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT) method will be followed to make the teaching fruitful. Classroom activities will
include a warm up session, presentation and discussion.
Sentence Stress in English
Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can
help you understand spoken English, especially when spoken fast.
Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or "beat". You remember that word
stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain
words within a sentence.
Rules for Sentence Stress in English: Most sentences have two types of word:
1. Content words : the key words of a sentence that carry the meaning or sense.
E.g. come, go, learn, hear, involve, etc.
2. Structure words : small, simple words that make the sentence correct
grammatically. They give the sentence its correct form or "structure". E.g. he,
we, they, on, onto, at, etc.
If you remove the structure words from a sentence, you will probably still understand
the sentence. But if you remove the content words from a sentence, you will not
understand the sentence.
The basic rules of sentence stress are:

2. 1. Content words are stressed
2. Structure words are unstressed
The following tables can help you decide which words are content words and which
words are structure words:
Content words – stressed
Words carrying the meaning Example
Main verbs Buy, sell, come, leave, teach, make
Nouns Bus, music, Bela, school, lesson
Adjectives Bad, interesting, amazing, boring
Adverbs Quickly, loudly, furiously
Negative auxiliaries Don’t, aren’t, can’t
Structure words – unstressed
Words for correct grammar Example
Pronouns He, we, they, I
Prepositions On, at, up, into
Articles A, an, the
Conjunctions And, but, because
Auxiliary verbs Do, be, have, can, must, should

3. Exceptions:
The above rules are for what is called "neutral" or normal stress. But sometimes we
can stress a word that would normally be only a structure word, for example to correct
information. Look at the following dialogue:
"They've been to Mongolia, haven't they?"
"No, THEY haven't, but WE have.
Note also that when "be" is used as a main verb, it is usually unstressed (even though
in this case it is a content word).
Sentence stress and meaning:
Spoken English can better be understood by understanding sentence stress correctly.
When you highlight or exaggerate a key word in a spoken sentence, you can really
change the understanding for the listener.
For example, here is a sentence which has 7 words, putting stress each time on
different word can really change its meaning: (word stress is underlined)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (I, myself)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe you got wrong I didn’t say it)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe hinted but not SAID)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (someone else might have)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe he kept it)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (talking about PARTICULAR money)
· I didn’t say he stole the money (maybe something else)
Mastery use of sentence stress can really make you a good native like speaker. It
surely does add rhythm when you speak. But over exaggeration can result in derailed
meaning.