Hello and welcome to the course.
I'm Nicole Calpe English teacher and accent reduction specialist.
In this first lesson we're going to take the topic of words stress what you learn about in the five
days to a better axent course and we're going to dive deeper into that subject to talk about a sound
that you need to master to correctly stress words and that sound is the Schwamm
before talking about the shuang.
However let's briefly review the idea of word stress.
Let's take a quick quiz.
What syllable has the primary stress in the following words.
Now remember the syllable with the primary stress is said louder and longer all round
all round.
Now the second syllable is the primary stress syllable round is louder and longer with a clearly understandable
vowel sound.
Number two system
the first part CIS is the primary stress syllable company
the first syllable
together
second syllable
especially
again the second syllable is the primary stress syllable here.
Stressing the correct syllable is extremely important in English.
Studies have shown that misplaced words stress is one of the main causes of lack of intelligibility
in English speech.
Therefore it's crucial to focus on this area as you work to improve your English speaking skills.
No it's not possible to analyze your entire English vocabulary overnight.
But what we can do is focus on the words that are more frequent in your speech that will include both
wordless.
From the most frequently spoken words and your own personal high frequency wordless.
This last one will be different for each individual since it's a list composed of words that are important
to your life.
The words in our previous examples were all taken from the top 500 most common words in spoken English
so you can be sure that you are going to hear these words over and over again.
So let's make sure that you are stressing these high frequency words correctly in addition to working
through these word lists.
It's important to learn some basic words stress rules for English.
This should help you a lot by giving you hints as to where to stress words.
If you're not sure now let's see how much you remember about the word stress rules you learned in the
five days to a better axent course.
I'm going to give you a quiz to see how much you've remembered and to refresh your memories before we
move on to some more important topics.
Question number 1.
What does it mean to stress a syllable
in our stress syllables.
The vowel sound will be pronounced clearly.
You should be able to easily identify the vowel in the stressed syllable.
In addition the primary stress syllable will be held longer and said louder and any higher pitch in
your voice.
Question too if a word has two syllables and is now a noun as a person a place a thing or an idea which
part you stress do you trust the first syllable or the second in a two syllable noun
most two syllable nouns and adjectives stressed the first syllable for example mime movie college.
All right.
I'm going to ask you to stop the video right after you hear the directions for the next part because
I want you to have enough time to complete this activity before moving forward.
All right.
Look around you in your house for work or where you happen to be.
Take a look around.
Give three examples of things that you see
now.
You'll note each of these things is a noun right a thing is a noun.
It can be a thing it can be a person but for the moment please only choose ones that are two syllables.
Say them outloud making sure to stress the correct syllable.
Now going to give you an example here.
I look around me in my office and here are some things that I see some two syllable nouns tissue glasses
garden Apple jacket.
You'll notice each of those is two syllables and it's a thing that I can see and touch.
And each one is stressed and the first part of the word.
So this is what I want you to do as well.
Stop the video.
Look around you and take a little inventory of the two syllable nouns around you and make sure you're
prancing each one with the stress on the first syllable.
I would encourage you to do the same activity in another place go out to the park go to your office
go to work and do the same activity so you can practice with more words that you're likely to use in
your speech.
Question number three for a compound noun do you the first or second part remember a compound noun is
composed of two parts.
These two parts are put together to form a new noun.
So when there are these two parts is the first or second part stressed
compound nouns stress the first part.
For example somebody anything newspaper chairman you'll lose the first part of each of those.
The red part is the part that said loudest and longest.
Now again I'm going to have you stop the video in just a moment after I give you your instructions.
I want you to walk around your house your workplace wherever you happen to be making a list of all the
compound nouns that you can see or notice around you say them out loud again making sure to stress the
correct part which will be the first part.
Now here are some examples.
What I found around me suitcase toothbrush cell phone and doorbell.
And again I suggest that you do the same activity in another place so you can practice with more words
that will be common for you in your speech.
Question number four if a word has two syllables and it's a verb do you stress the first or second syllable.
Now if you remember a verb is simply an action word k a word that describes something like Ron we're
talk eat something that is in action that somebody is performing
a lot of two syllable verbs stress the second syllable.
Not all of them but you will find a good deal of them for example control remain and provide.
Now I want you to take a look at the top 1000 verb chart that I've put into your class files and repeat
along with the audio files to train yourself to pronounce our most common verbs correctly.
You'll notice that these are split into different categories.
You'll find verbs that are stressed on the second syllable which is the most common pattern but you'll
also find some common verbs that are stressed on that first syllable.
So I want you to listen and repeat along with me in the audio files to make sure that your brain is
getting used to these patterns.
Now with this list I want you only to worry about the word stress whether you're stressing the first
or second syllable.
Make sure you're making a distinction between these different levels of stress for now don't worry about
problem sounds.
We're going to work on those later.
So just do your best to repeat exactly as I say.
Now that you've got the idea of stressing the correct part of words we need to learn what to do with
the unstressed syllables.
We will explore the unstressed syllables and the Schwabe.
In part two of this lesson.
Thanks for watching.