Word Stress in English
Word stress is your magic key to understanding spoken English. Native speakers of English use word stress naturally. Word stress is so natural for them that they don't even know they use it. Non-native speakers who speak English to native speakers without using word stress, encounter two problems:
1. They find it difficult to understand native speakers, especially those speaking fast.
2. The native speakers may find it difficult to understand them.
In this lesson we look at the most important aspects of word stress, followed by a short quiz to check your understanding:
• Understanding Syllables for Word Stress
• What is Word Stress?
• Why is Word Stress Important?
• Where do I Put Word Stress?
• Word Stress Rules
• Word Stress Quiz
Understanding Syllables
To understand word stress, it helps to understand syllables.
Every word is made from syllables.
Each word has one, two, three or more syllables.
word number of syllables
dog dog 1
green green 1
quite quite 1
quiet qui-et 2
orange or-ange 2
table ta-ble 2
expensive ex-pen-sive 3
interesting in-ter-est-ing 4
realistic re-al-is-tic 4
unexceptional un-ex-cep-tion-al 5
Notice that (with a few rare exceptions) every syllable contains at least one vowel (a, e, i, o or u) or vowel sound.
What is Word Stress? >
What is Word Stress?
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word, we accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important) and all the other syllables very quietly.
Let's take 3 words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound the same when spoken? No. Because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each word. And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is different.
click word to hear
shape total
syllables stressed
syllable
PHO TO GRAPH
3 #1
PHO TO GRAPH ER
4 #2
PHO TO GRAPH IC
4 #3
This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa, aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND, etCETera, etCETera, etCETera
The syllables that are not stressed are ‘weak’ or ‘small’ or ‘quiet’. Native speakers of English listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If you use word stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your comprehension.
Try to hear the stress in individual words each time you listen to English - on the radio, or in films for example. Your first step is to HEAR and recognise it. After that, you can USE it!
There are two very important rules about word stress:
1. One word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two stresses, you have heard two words, not one word.)
2. The stress is always on a vowel.
Why is Word Stress Important? >