English Winners. Today we're going to do a lesson about sentence stress. So you
know words have stress on syllables, right? Like 'jacket,' or 'ambiguous,' or
'spaghetti,' right? But sometimes with sentences, there's also certain words
that get stressed more than others. Have you ever wondered: Am I really saying the
sentence correctly? Well, in this lesson, you're going to learn how to pronounce
sentences correctly by giving the right word the right stress, okay? And so, to
understand sentence stress, you need to understand that there are two different
kinds of words: you have your CONTENT WORDS, which contain the important
information, and then the STRUCTURE WORDS which exist for grammar... just to hold the
sentence together, mainly. I'll show you some examples of
content words on the table. You should see 'content words' and it says 'stressed';
that means the content words get the stress. Here are some examples: words like
main verbs, like sell, give, take, eat. Nouns: car, granola, door. Adjectives: big, loud,
boring. Adverbs like quickly, loudly, often. And negative auxiliaries: these are words
that turn a statement or question negative, like don't, can't, aren't, won't...
And then, of course, we have our structure words. Let me give you some examples of
those: notice the structure words say 'unstressed' next to them. That's because
they do not receive any stress. In fact, they are said rather quickly. Here are
some examples: Pronouns like he, she, we, they, it. Prepositions like on, at, in, to,
through. Articles: a, and, the. Conjunctions: and, because, but, And
auxiliary verbs: do, be, have, should, would, must, can. These are said very quickly. So
we are going to start with a basic sentence using just the content words,
okay? Eat Granola Breakfast. Now that's not a full sentence; these are just the
content words. We have a verb. We have a subject. We have an object, but we don't
have the information that makes it a complete sentence, okay? So we're going to
fill it in with some structure words, okay? 'You eat granola for breakfast.' Now
we have a full sentence. We added a structure word. You is a pronoun, so now
we have a full sentence, okay? Let's expand our sentence even bigger:
'Will you eat granola for breakfast this morning?' Notice I added 'this morning' and
'this' is a structure word, and 'morning' I made a Content word. Notice: between these
words, about the same amount of time passes, whether I have one structure word,
two, three... zero!? It doesn't matter, we have: Eat Granola Breakfast Morning.
'Will you eat granola for breakfast this morning?'
Notice that the structure... the words are said very quickly to keep that timing.
Because, English has a rhythm to it. This separates the fluent English speakers
from novices who are just saying their words fast. By knowing how to stress
those content words... that gives you the ability to be understood in English, even
when you're speaking quickly. That's what gives English it's stressed timed rhythm.
Check out this example: we're gonna make it very simple. I'm just gonna count from
1 to 4. You can do that do it with me, okay?
1 2 3 4. One more time: 1
2 3 4. So imagine each number is a Content word, and now I'm going to add
the word 'and' between each number; that can be like a structure word. One and two
and three and four and... just like that. Pretty easy... but then we can add more
content words. So now I'll change 'and' to 'to the.' You'll see what I mean:
One to the two to the three to the four to the... you see how we have two content
words, but the one two three four remained the same speed? Okay, now I'll
speed it up and make it a little bit faster, okay? One and then a two and then a
three and then a four and then a 1 and then a 2 and then a 3 and then a 4 and
then a-- so the 1 2 3 4 are the exact same speed, but then - and then a- we have 3
structure words in between our numbers. And that is how rap music is built on-
there's a little bit more to it than that, but that's 80% of your English rap
music, and it's also how we speak... how we speak very quickly, ok? One more sentence,
all right? Let's put our content words up: Close Door Quietly. Those are just our
content words... 1 2 3... close door quietly. Now we're going to
add in some other words to make it a complete sentence. Let's do it:
'Close the door quietly.' So, 'close the door quietly...'
notice how 'the' didn't get any stress? It was just in between the numbers, okay? Now
we're going to expand it even further: 'Please close the door quietly. Please
Close the door quietly.' Just like that. now we're gonna make it a really big
sentence... or much bigger, okay? 'Can you please close
the big door really quietly? Can you please close the big door really quietly?'
See? Just like that. 'Can you please close the big door really quietly?' Now, with
practice, you'll be able to be understood better when you're speaking with the
proper stress. When you're saying your sentences, you'll be able to be
understood better, and you'll be able to be better at listening when other people
are speaking quickly? Did you like this video? I hope you did. Let me know what
issues you have trouble with... with your pronunciation... in the comments below.
Until then, check out my fluency playlist and my pronunciation playlist.
See you later, English Winners. Keep on winning.
you