Accent Reduction Classroom

When you listen to Americans pronounce words you might notice that they always stress one syllable more that the others.

That’s because in English words one syllable always pronounced with more emphasis than the other syllables. The vowel in the stressed syllable is lengthened and clear.

Pronunciation teachers call this emphasis syllable stress. Learning to use syllable stress is one of the very best ways to improve your English pronunciation and reduce your accent.

There are a series of rules or patterns you can use to decide which syllable to stress in an English word. Here are four of these patterns:

1. The first part of a a compound word is usually stressed.
For example: NOTEbook, HAIRcut, AIRport, BATHroom.

2. Stress is usually placed on the syllable that contains the ROOT or BASE word. That means that word prefixes are usually not stressed.

Here are a few examples: unPAID, inCLUDE, preDICT, reMIND.

3. Word suffixes are usually not stressed.
Here are a few examples: SLOWly, FASTer, SPEAKing, CAREful

4. Exceptions to the suffix rule are words of French origin such as millionAIRE, volunTEER and picturESQUE.

If you haven’t noticed the way Americans use syllable stress I want you to start to listen for it. Once you can recognize and use this important feature of spoken American English the rhythm of your speech will improve and people will be able to understand you much more easily!

I teach you everything you need to know about American English syllable stress in my Accent Reduction Intensive Course.