Sentence Stress

Sentence Stress

Sentence stress is the music off spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you to understand spoken English, even rapid spoken English. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or “beat”. You remember that word stress is accent on one syllable within a word. Sentence stress is accent on certain words whitin a sentence.

·         Content Word

Content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and sometimes adverbs. Content words are the words that help form a picture in  head, give the contents of story and tell listener where to focus his or her attention.

Category	Description	Example
Noun	People, place, things, idea	Patty, seattle, cars, happiness
Main verb	Verb without auxiliaries	Ran. Swim, thinking
Adjective	Word that describ nouns	Red, soft, careful
Adverb (except adverb or frequency)	Word thaat describe adverb	Calmly, quickly, carefully
Negative	Word that negate	Not, ever

·         Function Word

Function words are the words use to make sentences grammatically correct. Pronouns, determiners, and prepositions, and auxiliary verbs are examples of function words. If function words are missing or used incorrectly, are probably considered poor speakers of English. In addition, sometimes do things to deliberately push function words into the background... almost the opposite of stressing. This is called reducing.

Category	Description	Example
Auxiliary verb	A form of the word to be or to have or modals	Are, was, could, should
Preposition	Word that tell relation to other words	At, on, to, near
Conjunction	Word that tie clauses together	And, so, but, however
Determiners	Word that give detail to nouns	A, an, the, some, any
Pronouns	Words that replace nouns	I, it, we, they, he, she