American English Stress
Stress
Stress is one of the three aspects of rhythm in English pronunciation. Stress, linking, and intonation work together to create the rhythm of a fluent speaker. Being able to pronounce sounds correctly is a building block of rhythm, but students should not wait until sounds are mastered before learning about and practicing stress, linking, and intonation.
Stress is divided into two categories (syllable and sentence), each explained below. Syllable stress lessons or drills (at left) can be practiced in any order; the goal is to eventually become familiar with all the patterns. Sentence stress lessons (at left) should be practiced in order because lessons build on previous lessons.
Syllable Stress
Syllable stress is knowing which syllable of a word to say louder and longer than the others. While there can seem to be no pattern at all to syllable stress, many words do follow general rules to help the English speaker learn which syllable get the stress. Those rules can be based on parts of speech (noun, verb, adverb, adjective), a category (compound words), or on the suffix of a word. Students should realize, however, that many English words do not follow any syllable stress rule at all. The only way to learn them is to listen to native English speakers and identify differences between how the native speaker said the words and how the ELL student says the word.
Two-syllable words are stressed based on the part of speech they belong to. Compound words are stressed on the first word in most circumstances; there are certain exceptions which are stressed on the last syllable instead. Other words are stressed based on their suffixes.
You can practice your ability to recognize the syllable that is supposed to be stressed in many words by using the syllable drills on the left side of this page. The drills contain lists of words pronounced by native speakers, grouped by the category of stress rule they fall into, which you can listen to in order to become familiar with American English stress patterns.
Sentence Stress
Sentence stress is understanding which words in a sentence to bring attention to and which ones to reduce, or say quicker and quieter. The combination of stressing some words while reducing others is what gives English its musical quality. Syllable stress is a building block of sentence stress, but students should not wait until syllable stress is mastered before learning about and practicing sentence stress.