How to use Word and Sentence Stress to Score Higher in Pronunciation on Your IELTS Exam

In this tutorial you will learn:


The importance of word stress

The importance of sentence stress


This will help you in your IELTS speaking exam because:


You will develop a wider range of pronunciation features on your IELTS speaking exam.


Getting ready for the IELTS speaking test is not easy.

One of the four areas that you’ll receive a grade for is pronunciation; in fact, pronunciation accounts for 25% of the speaking score.

You might not know it, but the way you pronounce your words and sentences, and the pauses that you make when you’re speaking is all part of pronunciation and will make a significant difference in your IELTS speaking exam.

One of the important parts of pronunciation is word stress. Many English learners find it difficult to use sentence stress correctly. In English, stress occurs regularly throughout your sentence.

If you use word stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and therefore score higher on your IELTS speaking test. So what exactly is stress? In this article, we’ll discuss word stress and sentence stress.

What is word stress?



In English, when a word has more than one syllable, one part of the word will be more stressed than the other; this is called word stress.

And it means that one of the vowel sounds of that syllable will be pronounced longer, louder, and at a slightly higher pitch than the other parts of the word.

If you mispronounce the word and place stress on the wrong syllables the listener will not understand you properly.

Along with changing the meaning of a word, stress changes can also change the part of speech especially in cases where words have the same spelling.

For example, let’s compare two similar words that have different meanings because of stress.

con?test /?k??n?t?st/

The first word above is a noun, and it means a game or competition. We pronounce it by putting the stress on the first syllable.

Compare it to the following:

con·test? /k?n?t?st/

In this second word, the syllable is on the second syllable; and it means to argue against something. Here are a couple more for you to practice:

pre?sent pre·sent?

ob?ject ob·ject?

ex?port ex·port?

If you’re unsure where the stress is in a word, check a dictionary. In most dictionaries, you will see the symbol ‘ before the stressed syllable. Also, check out https://forvo.com/, the online pronunciation dictionary.

Word Stress Rules

Now that you have a general understanding, here are a couple of basic rules about word stress:


Vowels are stressed, not consonants.

One word cannot have two stresses; so each word has one stress.

If a word is both a verb and a noun, the noun stresses the first syllable, whereas the verb, is stressed on the second syllable. See the above examples.


Also, here are some additional rules to follow:

1. For most nouns with two syllables, the stress is on the first syllable.


Parent

Embrace

Chicken

Knowledge


2. Prefixes and Suffixes aren’t stressed.


Effortless

Undo

Opening

Inside


3. If a word ends in ‘’er’’stress is on the syllable before it.


Teacher

Painter

Loser

Dancer


4. Stress the first part of compound words.


Blackbird

Greenhouse

Bedroom

Sunrise


5. Stress the first syllable of three syllable words ending ‘’ly’’.


Perfectly

Quietly

Basically

Drunkenly


Sentence Stress



Another important part of pronunciation is sentence stress which is the overall rhythm of sentences whereby emphasis is on certain words but not on others.

Useful tip for the speaking exam: In sentence stress, content words are often stressed, while structural words are not. Content words are words with the most meaning in the sentence; these are the words that are stressed; this includes the following:


Nouns

Adjectives

Main verbs

WH-questions, i.e., who, what, where, when, etc.

Negative words, i.e., never, neither, not, etc.

Modals, i.e., should, could, might, etc.

Adverbs, i.e., carefully, loudly, quickly, etc.


On the other hand, structural words which are not stressed are as follows:


Articles

Prepositions

Possessive adjectives, i.e. his, her, my, etc.

Personal pronouns, I, you, he, etc.

Conjunctions, i.e., but, and, or, etc.


Here are some examples of stressed works in the following sentences:

1. They won’t go to school today.

2. Allison’s father had a heart attack.

3. Have you seen the new movie with Brad Pitt?

4. I’ve never heard of that!

5. I’m going back to Vienna for good.

6. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.

By practicing word stress in your speech, your pronunciation will immediately and automatically get better.

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