The document discusses sentence stress in English. The main points are: 1. Sentence stress refers to emphasizing certain words within a sentence, giving the sentence rhythm. 2. Words in a sentence can be classified as either content words, which carry the main meaning, or structure words, which are less important grammatically. Content words receive stress while structure words are unstressed. 3. The time between stressed content words should remain constant to maintain the rhythm of English speech. Structure words can be said more quickly or slowly to achieve this constant rhythm.

2. WHAT ISSENTENCE STRESS?
• Like word or syllable stress, sentence stress can
help you to understand a language, especially when
spoken fast.
• Remember that word stress (syllable stress) is the
'beaf on one or more syllables within a word;
sentence stress is the 'beaf on certain words within
a sentence.
• In other words, sentence stress can be described
as the 'rhythm' of spoken language.

3. WHAT ISSENTENCE STRESS?
• Like word or syllable stress, sentence stress can
help you to understand a language, especially when
spoken fast.
• Remember that word stress (syllable stress) is the
'beaf on one or more syllables within a word;
sentence stress is the 'beaf on certain words within
a sentence.
• In other words, sentence stress can be described
as the 'rhythm' of spoken language.

4. WHY IS'STRESS' IMPORTANT
IN PRONUNCIATION?
• Stress is important because it adds
rhythm when you speak.
• If you stress all the words in an
utterance, you may sound
unpleasant or even cause
misunderstanding, because:
1. You are giving too much
information; and
2. English native speakers usually
stress all words only when they
are impatient or angry.

5. • Dealing with sentence stress, we have to know
which words should be stressed and which should
be unstressed.
• To know more about this, let's see the following
types of words:

6. According to the way they function, words in a
language are normally classified into two types:
a). Content words, are the key words of a
sentence. They are the important words that
carry the meaning or sense.
b). Structure words, are not very important
words. They are small, simple words that make
the sentence correct grammatically. They give
the sentence its correct form or structure.

7. • Imagine that you receive a telegram message:
sell car gone France
This sentence is not complete. It is not a grammatically
correct sentence. But you probably understand it
because the four words communicate very well. This kind
of words are known as the content words.
The sentence above may has a meaning that:
"Somebody wants you to sell his car for
him, because he has gone to France."

8. sell my car I've gone to
France
The new words (my, I've, and to) do not really add
any more information, but they make the message
more correct grammatically .
We can add even more words to make one complete,
grammatically correct sentence, but the information is
basically the same.
We can add a few words to the sentence:

9. Will you sell my car because I've gone to
France?
In the sentence above, the four key words (sell, car,
gone, and France) are the "content words" and are
all stressed.
The additional information to complete the sentence
are called "structure words"and are all unstressed .

10. • In the previous example, there is 1 syllable between
"self' and "car' and 3 syllables between "car' and
"gone", but the time (t) between "self' and "car' and
between "car' and "gone"is the same.
Will you sell my car because I've gone to France?
I ! II I
1 syllable
!
3 syllables
We maintain a constant beat on the stressed words ( sell,
car, gone, France) . To do this, we say "my" more slowly,
and "because I've" more quickly.

11. We change the speed of the small
"structure words", so that the rhythm of
the key "content words"stays the same.
In other words, the time (t) between each
stressed word is the same.

12. N u m b e r o f S y l l a b l e s
Will you sell my car because I've
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
.::;.:..:=to Fr nce?
''''I
I
'
0.6 0.60.60.6

13. 1. Content words are stressed;
2. Structure words are unstressed; and
3. The time between stressed words is always the
same.
The following tab le can help you decide which words are the
content words and w hich are the structure words :
• The basic rules of sentence stress in English are:

14. Main Verbs buy, give, take, eat, employ
Words Carrying the Meaning or
Sense:
Examples:
Nouns chair, book, music, Mary
Adjectives red, big, interesting, beautiful
Adverbs quickly, loudly, never, always, now
Negative Auxiliaries don1, can't, won1, shouldn't
Possessive Pronouns mine, yours, her, his, ours, theirs
Interrogatives what, who, why, where, when, how

15. Personal & Relative Pronouns
Prepositions
Articles
Conjunctions
Auxiliary Verbs
Possessive Adjectives
Demonstratives
Expletive "THERE"
/, you, we, he, whom, which
on, at, into, in
the, an, a
and, but, because, or
do, can, have to, must
my, your, her, his, our, their, its
this, that, these, those
there

16. Exception !!!
The above rules are for what is called "normal
stress". But sometimes we can stress words that are
structure words, for example to correct information,
such as in:
They've been to Japan, haven't they?
No, they haven't, but we have.
NOTE: The underlined words are stressed, although they
belong to the structure words.