Word Stress

Hi, guys! 

Today we are going to talk a little bit about word stress in English. Brace yourselves, and Wingardium Leviosa! haha :)

Stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. In English, stressed syllables are louder than non-stressed syllables. Also, they are longer and have a higher pitch.

The underlying pattern of English rhythm is that the stressed syllables of stressed words occur on relatively evenly spaced "beats." This concept is called the Rhythm Rule. This pattern is possible because words and sentences have three levels of stress:

1. stressed
2. unstressed
3. secondarily stressed

Based on this, we can say that English is a stress-timed language.

Examples

Look at the examples of stress in words. The stressed syllables are represented by bold writing. If you want to, you can listen to the words to hear the stress (click here Stressed syllables)

holiday, alone, admiration, confidential, degree, weaker, nervous, parents

In spoken language, grammatical words (auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, articles, etc.) usually do not receive any stress. Lexical words, however, (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) must have at least one stressed syllable.

There is no rule, however, about which syllable is stressed in a word with more than one syllable. You will need to learn the stress of words by heart.

Now... it's your turn! 

Based on this brief overview and on the explanation made in class, answer the questions below in the comment section of this blog. Remember to put the number of the question before the answer. 

The exercise below belongs to BBC Learn English * Adapted 

What is the correct stress in these words? 

(The stressed syllables are in CAPITALS.)

1. Do you know how to pronounce this word? I find pronunciation quite difficult, don't you? 

a) PROnounce / PROnunciation 

b) proNOUNCE / proNUNciation 

c) proNOUNCE / pronunciAtion 

d) PROnounce / pronunciaTION 

2. She's been taking photographs for years. She's a brilliant photographer. 

a) PHOtographs / phoTOGrapher 

b) phoTOgraphs / phoTOGrapher 

c) PHOtographs / PHOtographer 

d) phoTOGrpahs / phoTOGrapher 

3. He likes studying geography. The geographic features of different counties interest him. 

a) geoGRAgraphy / geoGRAphic 

b) geOgraphy / geoGRAphic 

c) geoGRAgraphy / geOgraphic 

d) geOgraphy / geOgraphic 

4. Her boss is really critical. No matter what she does, he always finds something to criticise. 

a) criticAL / CRIticize 

b) CRItical / CRIticize 

c) CRItical / criticIZE 

d) criticAL / criticIZE 

5. My granddad is so dependable. If I have a problem, I can depend on him to give me good advice. 

a) DEPendable / DEPend 

b) depENdable / DEPend 

c) depENdable / depENd 

d) dependAble / depENd 

6. It was the first democratic election there for years. Almost everyone was happy to see democracy return in their country. 

a) demOcratic / demOcracy 

b) demoCRAtic / demOcracy 

c) demoCRAtic / demoCRAcy 

d) demOcratic / demoCRAcy

Source: Pronuncian - American English Pronunciation (American English Stress) and Learning English Online (Stress and Intonation).

Exercise source: BBC Learn English - Quiznet (Word Stress)