How to Teach Intonation & Stress

1. 1Stressed and Unstressed Words

To begin teaching how stress works in English, you must first define common stressed and unstressed

patterns. With this you must also explain the difference in speech patterns of a stressed syllable versus an

unstressed syllable. First off, stressed syllables are louder and longer, and are the focus of the meaning we are

trying to convey. Stressed syllables commonly occur in content words which are the meat of any sentence.

They are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Structure words, or the little words in sentences, are commonly

unstressed syllables. These are articles, prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions. You can easily show this first

with simple sentences, and eventually moving on to more complex sentences and conversations. When

teaching how to stress words, show students that content words have one main stress.

Show student how the pitch or intonation rises with the stress. Once students gain the concept of

stressing individual words in sentences, begin teaching the different ways stress influences meaning. It can be

very interesting just taking one or two sentences per day and changing the stress on each content word to

change the meaning. You can even do this coupled with whatever grammar point you are focusing on.

For example, if you are teaching a lesson on adjectives, you could do some stress examples to show

emphasis, contrast or contradiction. Utilize adjectives to make your point. For example take the sentence

I want a shiny, blue, new car. The meaning can change depending on what word is given the main stress. Have

students practice changing the stress from word to word and discuss how the meaning changes.

Another significant way to practice stress is to use Jazz Chants or have students clap, stomp, or bang to

express where the stress lives. This works particularly well with young students, but adults will also have fun

clapping or stomping their way to stress understanding.

.2 2
Rhythm and Reduction

Often when students are studying English, one problem they encounter is not being able to understand

native speakers with constant complaints that Americans speak too fast. One of the main issues here

is reduction. To become fluent students need to practice pronunciation that includes reduction. Reduction is

simply when speakers use reduced forms of words or phrases. This occurs when native speakers omit sounds

or run them together. There are a lot of examples of these in every dialect and accent of English.
 Some common examples of reduction are:

Gimme that instead of give me that

I dunno instead of I don't know

gotta instead of got to (which is a reduction of have to)

wanna instead of want to or would like to

and the ever common shoulda, coulda, woulda for should have, could haveor would have

It's important that students learn to determine when they hear reductions so that their fluency is not

compromised. It is a fact that native speakers just do not speak perfectly and anyone studying English must

learn that rhythm and stress go hand in hand for true understanding. To practice rhythm and reduction, you

could invite another teacher into your classroom. The two of you could then perform some role plays for the

class. Focus on reductions and give students particular tasks for each conversation. You may just want them to

determine the gist of what the role play was about, or you could have them jot down reductions as they hear

them and then define them. You could also use listening exercises like songs or video clips to perform some

of the same tasks.

.3 3
How Intonation Changes Meaning

Intonation is the subtle shift of patterns of stress in language. The improper use of intonation can cause

confusion and can also change the meaning of words or phrases. To start out, teach the intonation for basic

types of English sentences. You may want to begin with statements, yes/no questions and wh-questions.

Another popular one to focus on intonation is tag questionswhere you can really drive home the meaning shifts

with different intonations. Using the board, draw arrows to show the direction of the pitch for intonation. You

could also say sentences or questions aloud while drawing the shape of the intonation in the air with your hand.

Have students write intonation arrows for the meaning they would like to convey. You can utilize worksheets

or have students generate sentences on the spot. It can also be effective to have them practice aloud using

their hands to draw out the intonation in the air. One other common way to diagram intonation or stress is to use

a staircase-like drawing on the board to demonstrate where the voice goes up and where it should go down.

For example, Susie is happy, isn't she? Use the staircase drawing to change the intonation from IS to HAPPY to

SUZIE.

Stress” is part of the rhythm of a language, the pattern of stressed or emphasized syllables and unstressed syllables of which English
sentences are made up. Appropriate sentence stress is important for native-like or even comprehensible speech: if the stress
pattern is incorrect, then listener comprehension will suffer.
What are Methods to Teach Native- like Sentence Stress?

Start by Discussing Stress

Read a sentence aloud from the textbook without stressing content or main idea words. Ask students if they think it sounds right.
They will probably say no. Then read the same sentence with the correct stress pattern. Ask them what they think now. This will
raise their consciousness about stress.

Introduce Syllables

Stress in English interacts with syllables: that is, syllables alternate between stressed and unstressed within a sentence. Select a
sentence from a dialogue in your textbook and model “beating out” the syllables on the desk. Have students do the same. Have
them count the syllables in the sentence.

Elaborate on Stress

Explain the difference between stressed and unstressed syllables. Explain the stressed syllables are louder and longer. Stressed
syllables tend to occur in content words such as nouns and verbs; structure words such as articles and prepositions are usually
unstressed.

Provide Examples

Model stressed and unstressed syllables by selecting a sentence from your book and writing it on the board, marking the stressed
syllables with a dash or a dot. Then read the sentence aloud, emphasizing the stressed syllables. Have students practice with you.

Define Schwa

Explain that most unstressed syllables in English are reduced and pronounced as a “schwa.” Teach the schwa sound (the “uh” sound
as is the second syllable of “station”). Modeling the expressions “Uh-huh” (for “yes”) and “huh-uh” (for “no”) is a humorous way to
teach this sound. The American English greeting “How are you doing?” for example is really pronounced /how’r yuh doin’/ --the
structure words “are” and “you” get reduced to schwa.

Practice Sentence Stress

Practice the sample sentences on the board again, emphasizing the stress pattern, making the stressed syllables louder and longer
and reducing the unstressed syllables. Ask students about the content and structure words and which are stressed and unstressed.

Mark

Have students on their own pull sentences from the same dialogue in their books and mark the stress patterns.

Compare

Students can then compare their markings with a partner.

Practice in Pairs

Practice the dialogue in pairs, focusing on the stress patterns.

More Advanced Activities

Teach specialized use of stress and how meaning can shift based on the stress pattern and what the speaker wants to emphasize. “I
love my sister,” “I love my sister,” “I love my sister” and “I love my sister” all carry different meanings.
 Give out a dialogue with the content words deleted. Have students listen to a recording of the dialogue for the content words and fill
them in. They can then practice the dialogues in pairs.

An alternative to this, for more advanced students, is to have them predict the content words that belong in the blank spaces. Have
them fill in the dialogues, check them against the tape, and then students can practice.

Play “telegrams”: explain a telegram was something like a precursor to a text message—a message in which all the structure words
or were deleted: “Mom sick. Come home.” Give out a page of “telegrams.” Have students add the structure words and practice
reading with appropriate sentence stress.

The above activities can also be done with popular songs. Play the song and hand out the lyrics, with content words or structure
words deleted. Have students listen to the song and fill in the words.

Poetry is also a great way to practice sentence stress as poetry is actually based on regular stress, or meter, patterns. Teach students
a simple poem, such as Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Have them practice reciting it. They may try writing
their own similar poems after, imitating Frost’s style and stress/meter patterns.

Humor is often based on the stress pattern, or “delivery” as comedians call it. Tell a well-known joke and show how the humor is
affected by the way the speaker uses stress by delivering it first with the correct stress and then without.

Give out index cards with content words students are currently learning written on them. Have students line the cards up into
“sentences,” adding structure words as necessary, and mark the correct stress pattern then practice saying the sentences.

Do a “drawing” activity by handing out a dialogue and having students “map” the stress of each sentence in the dialogue over the
sentence, with high peaks representing stressed syllables and dips unstressed.

Have students bring in idioms that they’ve heard or want to learn about and go over the stress patterns.

It's no surprise that many teachers don't feel confident about tackling it in the
classroom. When teaching grammar or lexis, we find ways of making the language
accessible to our learners. How then to do this with intonation?

 What is intonation?

 Why teach intonation?

 Can I improve my own awareness of intonation?

 How I help my students:

o Awareness-raising
o Intonation and grammar
o Intonation and attitudes
o Intonation and discourse

 Conclusion

What is intonation?
Intonation is about how we say things, rather than what we say. Without intonation, it's
impossible to understand the expressions and thoughts that go with words.
 Listen to somebody speaking without paying attention to the words: the 'melody' you
hear is the intonation. It has the following features:

 It's divided into phrases, also known as 'tone-units'.

 The pitch moves up and down, within a 'pitch range'. Everybody has their own pitch
range. Languages, too, differ in pitch range. English has particularly wide pitch range.

 In each tone unit, the pitch movement (a rise or fall in tone, or a combination of the
two) takes place on the most important syllable known as the 'tonic-syllable'. The
tonic-syllable is usually a high-content word, near the end of the unit.

 These patterns of pitch variation are essential to a phrase's meaning. Changing the
intonation can completely change the meaning.

Example:
o Say: 'It's raining'.
o Now say it again using the same words, but giving it different meaning. You could say it
to mean 'What a surprise!', or 'How annoying!',or 'That's great!'. There are many
possibilities.

Why teach intonation?

Intonation exists in every language, so the concept we're introducing isn't new.
However, learners are often so busy finding their words that intonation suffers. Yet
intonation can be as important as word choice - we don't always realise how much
difference intonation makes:

 Awareness of intonation aids communication.

 Incorrect intonation can result in misunderstandings, speakers losing interest or even

taking offence!

Though it's unlikely our learners will need native-speaker-level pronunciation, what they
do need is greater awareness of intonation to facilitate their speaking and listening.

Can I improve my own awareness of intonation?

It's difficult to hear our own intonation. Choose somebody to listen to closely: as you
listen, visualise the melody in your head, 'seeing' how it's divided into tone-units. Next
time you do a class speaking activity, focus on your students' intonation. Are there
students whose language is 'correct', but something doesn't sound right? Do they come
across as boring or insincere? It may well be their pitch range isn't varied enough.
 How I help my students
Awareness-raising
Some techniques I find useful for raising learners' awareness of intonation:

 Provide learners with models - don't be afraid to exaggerate your intonation.

 Let students compare two examples of the same phrase, eg: varied/flat intonation,
English / L1.

 Ask students to have a 2-minute conversation in pairs as 'robots' (elicit the word using a
picture if necessary), i.e. with no intonation. When they then go back to speaking
'normally', point out that the difference is made by intonation - this is what gives
movement to our voices.

 Get students to imitate my intonation, but without words, just humming.

Intonation doesn't exist in isolation. So it makes sense to approach it together with

other factors.

Intonation and grammar

Where patterns associating intonation and grammar are predictable, I highlight these to
my students. I see these as starting-points, rather than rules.

Some examples are:

 Wh-word questions: falling intonation

 Yes/No questions: rising

 Statements: falling

 Question-Tags: 'chat' - falling; 'check' - rising

 Lists: rising, rising, rising, falling

When practising these constructions, I include activities focusing specifically on

intonation.

For example, Question-Tags: Students in groups are assigned jobs to mime to each
other. Students make notes about what they think each person's job is. They then have
to check they've understood the jobs: Students use rising/falling intonation question-
tags depending how sure they are: 'You're a pilot, aren't you?'. At the end, students
confirm their jobs.
 Intonation and attitude
It's important that students are aware of the strong link between intonation and
attitude, even if it's difficult to provide rules here.

 The first thing is for learners to recognise the effect of intonation changes. I say the
word 'bananas' - firstly with an 'interested' intonation (varied tone); then 'uninterested'
(flat). Students identify the two and describe the difference. We then brainstorm
attitudes, such as 'enthusiastic', 'bored', 'surprised', 'relieved'. I say 'bananas' for these.
Students then do the same in pairs, guessing each other's attitude.

 This can be developed by asking students to 'greet' everybody with a particular attitude.
At the end, the class identify each person's attitude. For younger learners, I use 'Mr
Men' characters (Miss Happy, Mr Grumpy, Miss Frightened, etc.) Each student is
allocated a character and, as above, they greet the class with that character's voice.

Intonation and discourse

Learners' also need awareness of intonation in longer stretches of language. Here, we

can give our learners clearer guidelines: 'new' information = fall tone; 'shared'
knowledge = 'fall-rise'.

A simple shopping dialogue demonstrates this:

SK: Can I help you?

C: I'd like a chocolate (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise) ice-cream. Anything else?
C: One strawberry (fall) ice-cream.
SK: One chocolate (fall-rise), one strawberry (fall-rise). Anything else?
C: Yes. One chocolate (fall-rise), one strawberry (fall-rise), and one vanilla (fall).

Higher level students can identify the 'new' / 'shared' information, and then practise
reading accordingly.

With lower level students, we memorise the dialogue together. Although I don't refer to
intonation directly, I use my hands to indicate it (fall = hand pointing down; fall-rise =
down then up). Students then prepare their own dialogues. I've found my learners pick
up these patterns very quickly.

Conclusion
When working on intonation in the classroom I:

 Remember that intonation is relevant to any speaking activity, and makes interesting
remedial/revision work.

 Remember that students don't always have to 'know' we're focusing on intonation: every
time I drill phrases they're hearing intonation models.
 Provide realistic and clear contexts.

 Avoid going into theory.

 Help students find patterns / rules-of-thumb, wherever possible.

 Use a consistent system for marking intonation on the board for example: arrow for
tone; tonic-syllable in CAPITALS; double lines ( // ) for tone-unit boundaries.

 Keep it positive and don't expect perfection. The last thing I'd want is to make my
students so anxious about their intonation that they stop speaking!

Sentence Stress

Try this matching exercise to practice sentence stress. On one side of the worksheet write several sentences of varying length. On
the other side, the sentences represented by a series of numbers; underline the number for the word that is stressed. For example:

I bought my sister a present. => 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6

Mike didn’t break the window. => 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Mix up the order in which the sentences appear on the left side. Say each sentence out loud, emphasizing the stressed word.
Students must then match each sentence with its representation in numbers.

What we mean by intonation

Intonation is a feature of pronunciation and common to all languages. Other features of pronunciation
include stress, rhythm, connected speech and accent. As with these other features, intonation is
about how we say something rather than what we say.

At its simplest, intonation could be described as 'the music of speech'. A change or variation in this
music (or pitch) can affect the meaning of what we say.

We can therefore think of intonation as referring to the way we use the pitch of our voice to
express particular meanings and attitudes.

Different functions of intonation in English

There are quite a few theories that attempt to explain what intonation does and how it is used in
English. Let us take a look at two of its main functions:

Attitudinal

In many spoken languages around the world – but especially in British English – it is easy for the
listener to understand the speaker's attitude: boredom, interest, surprise, anger, appreciation,
happiness, and so on, are often evident in their intonation.

For instance, a server at a restaurant asks ‘How’s the chocolate muffin, madam?’ and you
reply ‘mMMmmmm’ with the intonation rising in the middle and falling towards the end. The server
nods with a smile. Why? Because you have just expressed your appreciation for the item through the
music of your voice – and without so much as a single (ordinarily meaningful) word.

Another instance of a different type would be your intonation on receiving a surprise birthday cake at
your work. ‘Did you get that for me?’ you might say – your rising intonation, particularly on ‘me’ at the
end, expressing surprise and delight.

The feeling of boredom or indifference, on the other hand, might be expressed with a flat tone, (think
of a robot). Compare the 'thank you' uttered to the mailman delivering a utility bill (flat) and the ‘thank
you!’ said when someone helps you mend a flat tyre on the side of a road (expressive, heartfelt).

We often express gratitude and other emotions as much by our use of intonation as by the use of
specific words.

Grammatical

There are some intonation patterns in English, which, for the most part, correspond to the use of
particular grammar structures. The most common example is in the use of wh-questions (questions
beginning with 'who', 'what', 'why', 'where', 'when', 'which', and 'how') which usually have a falling
intonation.

In a conversation with a new classmate, the following questions would sound most natural with falling
intonation: 'What's your name?', 'Where are you from?', 'Why did you choose this school?', 'How long
will you study here?'.

Questions that require a 'yes' or 'no' answer, however, usually have upward intonation. In the same
conversation with your classmate, your voice would rise at the end when asking the following
questions: 'Have you studied here before?', 'Do you like the teacher?', 'Will you come back
tomorrow?'.