The Strategies that I Use to Improve My English Pronunciation and Accent (Part 3) Sentence Stress

 See Parts 1 and 2 here:

PART 1

PART 2

Practicing Sentence Stress 

I always tell my students to put their stress on the most important words in their sentences. They are important in the meaning that they want to convey.

 These important words are usually stressed. The words are called "content" words because if you remove them from your sentences, then your sentences will not make sense. (e.g. nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives).  Negatives and negations like never, no, can't, etc. are also stressed. Interrogative or question words ( what, where, why, etc. and some interjections are also sometimes stressed depending on the meaning.

Aside from content words, there are also structure words in our sentences. They connect the important words and they are usually shorter words. The examples are prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and articles (e.g. a, an, the, in, on, etc.).

However, sometimes, when I listen to native speakers, they don't really stress content words all the time.  Sometimes they put stress on structure words, especially when they want to emphasize something or clarify something. 

In clarifying or correcting information, we use certain structure words to emphasize what we really mean. For example, I said, I did it. Here you stress the pronoun, which is a structure word. It can mean that you want to make it clear that you are not blaming anyone and you are putting the blame or accountability on yourself.

Practicing Sentence Stress in  the Answers to "Tell me About Yourself Question."

Read the sentence first before listening to the audio so that you can compare your sentence stress to the way the native speakers will usually put their stress on the sentence below.

Here, we will observe which ones are stressed. 

the "I"

the main verb

the linking verb

 'I'm Greg. 

 'I'm a 'Filipino.

'I am 'from the 'Philippines.

'I was 'born in the 'Phililippines. 

'I am an 'English teacher with a 'major in 'phonology.

'I started off my 'career as an 'English teacher. 'I've been working 'there for 'five years.

I 'hope to make an 'impact in the 'field of 'phonology.

I 'earned my 'degree in 'English studies where I 'learned phonology.

I 'had the opportunity to go abroad.

I 'believe I 'have a 'solid background in 'phonology.

I 'started my 'career by 'teaching phonology.

I 'worked in a university.

I have 'applied for this 'job because my 'qualifications fit your 'requirements.

Based on the stress above, what can we conclude?

Should we say:

1. Stress the "I" if it's followed by the linking verbs "am" and "was"?

2. If "I" is followed by an action verb, then we stress the action verb?

We will find the answer in our next practice. Remember our rule, one step at a time. When you watch movies, observe also if native speakers usually put their stress on the above parts that I mentioned.  You can see and realize how different your accent is because of sentence stress.