What is “Sentence Stress”?

“Sentence Stress” need not be referred to as the particular anxiety an ESL student experiences when attempting to pronounce a particularly wordy sentence in English… Sentence Stress is actually the “music” of English, the thing that gives the language its particular “beat” or “rhythm”. In general, in any given English utterance there will be particular words that carry more “weight” or “volume” (stress) than others. From a speaking perspective, Sentence Stress will affect the degree to which an ESL student sounds “natural”. In terms of listening, it affects how well a student can understand the utterances they hear.

What is “Word Stress”?

Whereas Sentence Stress refers to the process whereby particular words are stressed within an overall sentence, Word Stress refers to the process whereby particular syllables (or parts of words) are stressed within an overall word. In general, Sentence Stress is more of a consideration for overall fluency – Word Stress tends to have more of a phonological and morphemic importance.

Which do you teach first – Sentence Stress or Word Stress?

An attempt to teach Sentence Stress should proceed any attempt to teach Word Stress. Both are areas that can be more or less picked up naturally – but Sentence Stress can be picked up and learned across all levels, whereas Word Stress requires a little more focus if students are to understand the phonological and morphemic issues involved (making it thus more appropriate at later/higher levels). Once Sentence Stress is an ongoing consideration in the classroom, Word Stress can be introduced to demonstrate the significance of syllable stress on sound changes (for instance variation in the pronunciation of “y” depending on its position in a stressed or unstressed syllable). Otherwise, Word Stress should be a general pronunciation issue.

How Sentence Stress Works and Why

In any given sentence in English there will be words that carry stress and others that don’t. This is not a random pattern. Stressed words carry the meaning or the sense behind the sentence, and for this reason they are called “Content Words” – they carry the content of the sentence. Unstressed words tend to be smaller words that have more of a grammatical significance – they help the sentence “function” syntactically and for this reason they are called Function Words (NOTE: sometimes “Function Words” are referred to as “Structure Words”.

Obviously the “content” of a sentence carries more significance than the particular “way” it is put together. An easier way to think of it is that if you take out all the “function” words (without real meaning) from a sentence, the sentence will still have a certain amount of meaning and can be understood. Doing the opposite will remove the meaning from a sentence and render it obsolete. It is logical that the meaningful units within a sentence will carry the most significance and therefore stress.

Content Words include: (Main) Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Negative Auxiliary Verbs, Demonstratives, Question Words

Function Words include: Pronouns, Prepositions, Articles, Conjunctions, Auxiliary Verbs, (Main) Verb “to be”

Examples:

I am talking to the clever students.

You’re sitting on the desk, but you aren’t listening to me.

He’s writing quickly, so it’s difficult for him to hear me.

A Note on Sentence Stress and English “rhythm”

It is important to remember that an English sentence will have a certain number of beats. Stressed (content) words always take up an entire “beat”, while “unstressed” function words fall between the beats – irrespective of how many function words have been grouped together. The time between beats is always the same. For this reason, function words are often spoken faster and with less volume – they are literally being “squeezed” into the gap between regular stressed beats. In the examples below, all of the function words (or groups of function words) take the same amount of time to pronounce, irrespective of the number of sounds or syllables they include. Doing a simple rhythmic clap or thump in time to the spoken sentence will demonstrate how this happens.

Examples:

Relevance to Students

It is important for Students to learn sentence stress because many of the function words that are squeezed between beats in English are actually suffixes attached to verbs in their own language. They thus often try to pronounce each and every word with equal stress, and it is harder for them to pick up individual function words during listening. Actually focusing too much on the function words often confuses them and sometimes results in them missing the content words, which carry the sentence’s meaning.

Sentence Stress Teaching Methodology

As mentioned above, a certain amount of Sentence Stress will develop in the students naturally through listening and imitation. Making it an important part of their Phonics development should help their Listening Comprehension and ability to sound more natural when speaking English.

Below are some of the ways you can introduce and create activities for Sentence Stress according to level. As a general rule, it should only be introduced when the students have gained the ability to read and/or write sentences. Age 8-9 is a good time to introduce it for Elementary Students, earlier if they have begun to read and write. Middle and High School students could begin learning Sentence Stress at pretty much any time, but generally the earlier the better.

Þ Elementary Levels

Introduction:

Take some sample sentences that the students have either produced themselves during some kind of activity, or are studying in the Phonics Part of their textbook. Whenever possible, try to combine Sentence Stress activities with words that are being taught as part of Phonics. Combining Sentence Stress activities with lessons that have prepositions or pronouns as the focus are likely to create confusion, as the teacher and students will naturally be over-emphasizing these words in order to learn them, and they are essentially unstressed in a naturally articulated sentence. To begin with, the sentences should be relatively simple and have as many monosyllabic words as possible.

Step 1:

Have the students repeat the sentences after you slowly, with a little “over-emphasis” on the stressed elements. Try to get them to start stressing the content words through natural imitation, without ever knowing they are now working on Sentence Stress. Repeat this process for two to three lessons at least, and anywhere up to one month.

Step 2:

After repeating some set sentences as per Step 1, get the students to start clapping or stamping out a rhythmic beat. Insert the sentences into this rhythm. They are likely to have initial difficulty with this, as they will instinctively start trying to correspond the number of words to the number of beats. Repeat this sort of activity for up to a week.

Step 3:

Adapt the process in Step 2 by stipulating how many claps or beats the students are allowed for each sentence. For example, in the sentence “The strong man is walking in the park”, the students should be instructed to fit the entire sentence into four claps (corresponding to the number of stressed words in the sentence) rather than 8 claps (the number of words in the sentence). First allow them to try and do it on their own. Then say the sentence aloud and really emphasize the stressed words (without clapping). They should be able to hear the number of beats based on this. Allow them to try it again, and then do it yourself – clearly pronouncing the sentence in time to the required beats. Practice this with a variety of sentences for up to a week – always asking them how many actual words they hear and how many “clap words” they hear.

This process should give them a conceptual awareness of sentence “beats” as opposed to number of words. Do not proceed to Step 4 until the students can repeat the sentences accurately within a defined number of beats.

Step 4: