How SENTENCE STRESS changes meaning in English

What is sentence stress? How does it change the meaning of a sentence? In this video, I will teach you how saying a word louder and longer in a sentence can change the sentence’s meaning. Many English learners don’t listen for sentence stress and as a result, they don’t fully understand what someone is saying. I will teach you how to recognize sentence stress and how it can change meaning. Then we will practice listening to sentences with different word stress and examine their meanings together. I’ll share many examples so you’ll be able to hear how native speakers use sentence stress, and how you can do it too! At the end of this video, you can practice more with our quiz at https://www.engvid.com/sentence-stress-english/TRANSCRIPTHello. My name is Emma and in today’s video I am going to teach you how to become a better listener, and I’m going to do that by teaching you about something called “Sentence Stress”. Okay? So I want you to think about the times you’ve listened to English, maybe in a movie, maybe you saw a movie, or maybe a TV show – was there ever a time where you didn’t understand something? Maybe everybody laughed, maybe somebody suddenly got angry and you felt like you missed some of the meaning to why something happened. It might be because you’re not listening enough to sentence stress.So, what is sentence stress? Well, let me show you. When we talk about stress in language, we’re talking about making something louder and longer. Okay? So, for example, if I say the number “thirteen” versus “thirteen”, even though they sound similar, they’re different because I’ve put a different stress or a different emphasis on each part of the word. So this is in part a pronunciation lesson, but also really about listening and how to listen better.So I have here a sentence: “I love studying English.” Now, it seems like a pretty straightforward sentence, but I can actually change the meaning of this sentence using sentence stress. Okay? So, by saying different parts of the sentence louder and longer I can actually change the meaning. So I’m going to give you an example. “I love studying English.” What part did I say louder and longer? If you said: “I”, you’re correct, so I’m going to put a mark here to show sentence stress. “I love studying English.” If you heard somebody say this it means that I love studying English, but my friend doesn’t. Or I love studying English, but other people hate studying English. So I’m really emphasizing that I am, you know, maybe one of the only people. Okay? So, I love studying English.Now, this is a bit of a different meaning than if we move the stress-so I’ll just erase that-to the word “love”. Okay? So I want you to listen to how I say this: “I love studying English.” So in this case “love” is the part I’m saying louder and longer. Okay? And now it has a different meaning. Even though it’s the same sentence, just by saying a different part louder and longer I’ve changed the meaning. So: “I love studying English.” What does that mean? If I’m focused on the word “love” it means I really want to emphasize that I don’t just like English, I love English. English is my passion. I love it. I really, really, really like it a lot. Okay?Now, if we take the stress here and we move it to “studying”: “I love studying English”, okay? So now you hear “studying” is louder and longer, again, now we have a different meaning from when I said: “I love studying English”, “I love studying English”, “I love studying English”, each of these means a different thing. “I love studying English” means I only love studying English. I’m emphasizing maybe I don’t like using English, maybe I don’t like, you know, English in conversation. Maybe I only like reading my book about English, but I don’t actually like using it. Okay?Now, if we change the stress to “English” and now “English” is going to be louder and longer… Okay? So, for example: “I love studying English”, “English” is louder and longer, now this has a new meaning, a fourth meaning. “I love studying English” means only English. Maybe I hate all other languages. I don’t like studying French, I don’t like studying Portuguese, I don’t like studying Arabic. I only like studying English. Okay? So, as you can see, the way we pronounce these sentences adds meaning to them. It’s not just the words that have meaning, it’s also the way we use our voice, our intonation.Okay, so we’re going to do some practice listening. I’m going to say a sentence and you’re going to first listen to: What part of the sentence has the stress? What part of the stress is louder and longer? Okay? So let’s do that with the next sentence first. Okay? “I like your painting. I like your painting.” What part was the loud part? What part was the long part? “I like your painting.” If you said: “your”, you are correct. This part has the stress. Now, I have three different meanings that this sentence could mean. It could mean it’s an okay painting. Okay?

English: A Stress-Timed Language – American Pronunciation

ESL: English is a Stress-Timed language. That means you need contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables — unstressed words may reduce, and will be low in pitch and flatter in shape. In other words, you DON’T pronounce every word fully and clearly!!See the transcript for this video: http://www.RachelsEnglish.com/stress_timedImprove your American Accent / spoken English at Rachel’s English with video-based lessons and exercises.Cải thiện nói tiếng Anh Mỹ / 미국 영어 발음 향상 / 話されているアメリカ英語を向上させる / Сделай свой разговорный американский английский лучше / Meningkatkan berbicara bahasa Inggris Amerika / Melhorar a fala Inglês Americano / Mejorar el habla Inglés Americano / 美語 / बात अमेरिकी अंग्रेजी में सुधार / تحسين لهجتك الأمريكية الإنجليزية / שפר את המבטא האמריקאי שלך…with Rachel’s English!subscribe: http://www.YouTube.com/subscription_center?add_user=RachelsEnglish website: http://www.RachelsEnglish.com

Speaking English – How to talk about STRESS

http://www.engvid.com/ Want to practice your conversational English? In this lesson we’ll talk about stress! Do you stress out about school? Work? Public speaking? Or do you thrive in stressful situations? Today, you’ll learn vocabulary and expressions to describe stress and the situations that cause stress. I’ll also share my tips to cope with stress. Whether at work, school, or at home, we often talk about stress. Watch this lesson and don’t let speaking English stress you out! http://www.engvid.com/speaking-english-stress/TRANSCRIPTHi. This is Gill at www.engvid.com, and today we’re going to look at a particular type of thing that happens to people in their lives and also to look at the kind of way we describe it in the English language. Okay? So, we’re saying: “Don’t get stressed out!” Right? Now, getting stressed out is, with modern life, there are so many demands; we have to do things quickly, we have to survive, have somewhere to live, enough food to eat, somewhere to work, all of these things, and it causes a lot of stress. Okay? So this word “stress” is when you’re feeling very… Very upset and agitated, and worried because of everything that you have to do and everything that’s happening, and whether you can cope with it or not. So, modern life has a lot of stresses and strains. “Strains” are the same idea, really, things sort of pulling you around, making you do this and that, and you feel all the time you’re having to do what other people want you to do, and you have no control over what you’re doing, all of that kind of thing. And it can be quite upsetting if you don’t feel you’re in control of the situation.So… So we’re saying: “Don’t get stressed out!” This is maybe a little bit of advice in here, along with the way of expressing it, about how to cope with stress if you’re feeling stressed. Okay? So there’s lots of pressure in the modern world, it can be traumatic, it can cause you a lot of anxiety. We’re always being bombarded by information, advertising: “Buy this. Do this. You should be doing this.” And there’s a lot of pressure on people to do things that maybe they don’t really want to do or they don’t see the point of doing, but other people are pressurizing them to do it. Okay?So… So what someone might say if they’re in a job that is very, what we’d say highly pressured, a job that is very busy with a lot of responsibilities, somebody might say: “I can’t take the stress of this job!” Meaning: “I can’t… I can’t do it. I can’t keep having all this stress every day. It’s too much.” Okay? So: “I can’t take the stress of this job!” All right?One of the terms we use for when you’re more comfortable with what you’re doing is that you’re in your “comfort zone”. It’s like a zone, it’s an area where you’re comfortable. The things that you’re happy doing, the things that you are confident doing, that’s in your comfort zone. So maybe being at home, watching television is in your comfort zone. Maybe going and playing some sports, going swimming which you enjoy, going out with friends may all be in your comfort zone where you are comfortable. Okay? So you stay inside your comfort zone if you don’t really want to try new things.But sometimes, it’s a good idea to go outside your comfort zone or step outside your comfort zone just to test what you might be capable of doing. Okay? Just try a little something that’s different to see how it goes. So it’s not always a good idea to stay within your comfort zone all the time. Try to step outside it occasionally. I often try to try something new, see how it goes, and if it’s successful, then you feel great. “I’ve learnt something new, here”, and then you feel good about yourself. Okay? So, this term also: “Pushing the envelope” is another way of saying “going outside your comfort zone”, “stepping outside”. The idea of being inside an envelope, you have a letter inside, but the envelope is closed. But if you push the envelope, you’re sort of pushing outside it, trying something new, something different. Okay? So trying new things.