Word Stress in Sentences

Teacher: Welcome to daily tips on learning English. Today's tip is on word stress in sentences.

Teacher: In general, it's true that content words are stressed whilst function words are not stressed. Content words usually convey the meaning of the sentence. Function words make the sentence grammatically correct.

Teacher: Content words are nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverb, this, that, these, those, and wh words who, what, where, when, why, how, which.

Teacher: Function words are: Articles such as a and the; Possessive adjective such as, his, my, your; Prepositions such as in, on, of; Conjunctions such as and, but; Personal pronouns such as I, he, she; The be verb am, is, are, was, were; Auxiliaries such as do, does, did.

Teacher: Take for an example the sentence, Andrew brushes his teeth every morning. The content word alone can convey the meaning of the sentence. Namely, Andrew brushes (his) teeth every morning. The function word his only makes the sentence grammatically correct. So his is unstressed, the other words are stressed. Why isn't his stressed? Because, of course he brushes his teeth, not your teeth or my teeth. This we would naturally assume. If, however, Andrew brushes someone else's teeth besides his own, then it would be very important to let your listener know that by stressing whose teeth he brushes.

Teacher: So, what words should be stressed? The simple answer is whatever words are important to the meaning you are trying to convey. If someone writes a sentence on the board out of context and asks which words are important? Which words should you stress? You should answer, "that depends on the context."

Teacher: Stress is used to let your listener know what is important to your message. If your stress words properly, your listener will have an easy time understanding your message. If you stress every word equally, then your listener will have to listen very carefully and try to guess the main point of your message. If you stress the wrong words, the listener will misunderstand your massage or just feel very confused.

Teacher: So, remember to stress the important words to your message.

Teacher: This's been today's tip on learning English. Tune in tomorrow for another tip.