Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Introduction to Word Stress

Hello!

During Wednesday's class we learned about stressed syllables. In every English word of more than one syllable, one syllable is the strongest. It has the most stress. This means:
  • the vowel sound is longer
  • the vowel sound is clearer
  • the voice is a bit louder
  • the pitch is a bit higher

We practiced saying multi-syllable words while focusing on longer vowel sounds in stressed syllables. We also practiced saying words while focusing on clearer vowel sounds in the stressed syllables.

We did an exercise with minimal sentences. First we practiced as a class, then we practiced this with our partners. One example was:

What's in the desert? Answer: sand

What's in the dessert? Answer: sugar

Everyone did really well with only a few problems to talk about.

Finally, we looked at acronyms. In acronyms, the final letter is stressed the most. We did a pairs exercise with a list of acronymns like BC, BBC, CNN. Then we thought of some more on our own, like YMCA, FBI and CIA.

On Thursday we will talk about schwa! Bye for now.

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