Sentence Stress

Start this course with an in-depth description of what you will learn and review the outline of the course.

We set out the key objectives for this course so you can identify what you need to learn. We provide a downloadable checklist that you can print out to check off the points as you go through the course.

Before watching the pronunciation videos, you need to understand what stress, more specifically sentence stress, is. Here, you’ll see a comprehensive definition in a self-paced presentation.

Before starting the pronunciation section of this course, we provide you with all the correct materials. This includes the slides used in our pronunciation presentations with notes lines and an interactive worksheet, which you can answer whilst watching the videos. We provide the correct answers to this interactive worksheet too and point you to our pronunciation forum, where you can ask any questions about the correct pronunciation of sentence stress.

Learn what stress is and why it matters for the English language in this introduction pronunciation video. We'll explain the differences between syllabic and non-syllabic languages and demonstrate how to use stress bubbles in English.

The foundation of using sentence stress in English hinges on content and function words. In this video we explain what this means and categorise all parts of speech in English into either content or function words. You can download an additional resource that summarises all the parts of speech in English with examples and what type of word they are.

Now you'll be ready to learn how to apply sentence stress to English. We analyse one sentence and explain how to stress this sentence correctly. We teach sentence stress using our five-step system that will help you add sentence stress to any sentence in English.

Put your understanding of sentence stress into action with this interactive video. First, we will provide five sentences for which you should figure out the correct sentence stress, then you can listen to the correct stress with explanations.

Although most speech in English is guided by the sentence stress rules, there are a few exceptions. This first exception is situations where no stress is used at all. In this video, we explain what these situations might be and provide you with some real-life examples of no stress.

This video looks at emphatic stress and the situations when it may be used. As well as explaining what emphatic stress is, we provide you with examples and analyse when it might be used in speech. One of the things we look at in this video is the correct stress of intensifiers and we provide you with a downloadable list of the most common intensifiers and example sentences.

Contrastive stress is something that's used very commonly in English. After explaining what this means and demonstrating this stress with example sentences, we provide you with a clip taken from Shakespeare Live with numerous British celebrities debating about the correct sentence stress of an infamous phrase.

Poetry can be very difficult to read and understand in a foreign language. In this video, we briefly explain some of the key meters that exist in poetry in English and how this can affect the general sentence stress rules.

This is a short booklet with numerous example sentences that you can read out loud. All of these sentences target sentence stress. You can listen to audios of our native teachers reading these sentences correctly too, so you can read alongside the teacher or repeat once you’ve heard the audio.

Throughout this course, you'll learn about the importance of rhythm and a beat when speaking in English. Using a metronome can help you to achieve this. We point you towards our favourite metronome resources online as well as a list of the most common introduction questions that you can practise reading aloud with a metronome. Audios of our native teachers completing this exercise are also available.

One of the most common things we do as humans is talk about ourselves. Here, we review your personal profile and practise how to say this perfectly with the correct sentence stress. You can also access our private Flipgrid community and upload a video of you introducing yourself to practise using sentence stress in a realistic situation.

Reading alongside a native speaker can be a great tool for practising sentence stress. This can be a very challenging activity at first, but can help you improve your fluency. In this activity, we provide you with a short text about the importance of English, which you can read alongside our audio of a native teacher reading this text.

Transcripts are a great tool and we explain how you can maximise the use of transcripts when practising sentence stress.

When we add movement to the learning process, it's been scientifically proven that we're more likely to retain information. Here, we explain a great activity you can do that involves movement and targets sentence stress. This activity is based on idioms in the English language, so you can learn some of the most common idioms, whilst still practising sentence stress.

It is often said that you are fluent in a language when you can say or understand jokes. Because of the way that jokes are told in English, it's a great tool for practising sentence stress.

Download and print out our flashcards to play a game that tests your understanding of sentence stress. This game requires lots of creativity and tests your English grammar and vocabulary as well as sentence stress.

For those who want to review the sentence stress theory and rules, this is a great activity to complete. There is a downloadable worksheet with clear instructions to help you complete this activity.

Download our one-page summary of the topic to use for reference.

After completing the course, you can review your achievements and analyse what you have learnt.

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