Unstressed

This lesson is part of a series of one-hour lessons that will help students improve their prosody skills. Prosody, in short, is word stress, timing, and intonation. For an introduction to the series, click here.

Name: Unstressed

Time: 1 hour

Prep Time: It depends on how much you already know about word stress. You may have to learn a little more before starting.

Materials: This Worksheet

Primary Objective: Improve Word Stress Skills

Other Benefits: Become familiar with some money expressions

Plan:

5 Minutes Review what word stress is. Explain that today, instead of focusing the stressed words, you’re going to work on noticing the unstressed words.

15 Minutes Pass out this sheet. Read the full sentences from the answer sheet. Make sure to say the missing words with minimal stress. The students should try to write the missing words. Review the answers.

20 Minutes Put the students in groups and ask them to add to the list of commonly unstressed words. Ask them to try to make groups of similar words. Demonstrate by making a list of helper verbs (e.g. have, do, etc.) on the board.

Then, each student should come to the front of the class and write one commonly unstressed word on the board. Demonstrate the groups of words by circling the prepositions, underlining the helper verbs, and putting a square around the pronouns.

Write an example sentence on the board with one word from each group.

5 Minutes Have the students practice reading the sentences on the sheets in pairs.

15 Minutes Have the students write their own sentences. They should leave out or erase the unstressed words. Finally, they should read the sentences for their partner. The partner should try to fill in the missing words.

Extension Practice reading the sentences a final time, but use physical movements to reinforce the stressed/unstressed words. For instance, have everyone stand up. When there is a stressed word, they should jump. When there is an unstressed word, they should duck.

Notes: Just because a group of words is commonly unstressed, doesn’t mean they are always unstressed. Of course, lots of prepositions, pronouns, and helper verbs are stressed sometimes. This is all just a guideline.

Ideas for Homework: Students might watch a short clip of something and rewrite the transcript. They should underline the stressed words. (For example, they might watch a video like this, open the interactive transcript on the right and choose one paragraph for them to do).

Worksheet—Unstressed Words

These words are not usually stressed

Have	Are	Do	Is
The	A	Lot	Not
That	It	This	In
For	Of	On	At

Listen to your teacher read these sentences. Use the words above and other words to complete them.

1.  I __________ never saved __________  __________  __________  money. 2.  Don’t __________  think that __________  too expensive? 3.  How __________ __________ usually spend __________  money? 4.  This __________ __________  good price. You should think __________  getting __________. 5.  __________ __________ usually find __________  good deal? 6.  How much __________ __________ pay __________ __________ dress? 7.  Who handles __________  money __________ __________ family? 8.  He asked __________ __________  new loan, but they denied __________. A: __________ __________ want __________ go shopping? B: No, I can’t afford __________  buy __________  more clothes.

Answers

1.  I have never saved a lot of money. 2.  Don’t you think that is too expensive? 3.  How do you usually spend your money? 4.  This is a good price. You should think about getting it. 5.  Do you usually find a good deal? 6.  How much did you pay for that dress? 7.  Who handles the money in your family? 8.  He asked for a new loan, but they denied him. A: Do you want to go shopping? B: No, I can’t afford to buy any more clothes.

Word Bubbles

This lesson is part of a series of one-hour lessons that will help students improve their prosody skills. Prosody, in short, is word stress, timing, and intonation. For an introduction to the series, click here.

Name: Word Bubbles

Time: 1 hour

Prep Time: None

Materials: These Worksheets

Primary Objective: Improve word stress skills

Other Benefits: Discuss sports

Plan:

Introduce the concept (5 minutes) On the board, write three sentences with circles above each word. Bigger circles mean more stress. Read them with the students.

(Note: It’s difficult to change the font in this blog, so in place of circles, you’ll see letters here. S=Small, M=Medium, B=Big. On the worksheets, you’ll see circles (bubbles) instead.)

S     B    M   S

I   love football.

S       B  M  S

She’s so stupid.

M  S       S      M      M

I don’t think that’s true.

Practice as a class (25 minutes) Pass out the first page of these worksheets. Students should listen to you read the sentences and make circles above the syllables depending on how much stress the syllable needs. More stress means a bigger circle.

Then, pass out another worksheet with suggested answers and practice reading the sentences together.

Practice in Pairs (20 minutes) Pass out the third worksheet to half the class with similar but slightly different sentences.

Pass out the fourth worksheet to the other half of the class.

Students should complete the worksheet in pairs, with one student reading and the other making circles above their words.

Then they should practice reading them in pairs.

Finally, practice reading them as a class.

On their own (10 Minutes) Now, ask students to write a couple sentences on their own and make their own circles above the words. They should practice reading these in pairs as well.

Extension: Instead of just writing a few sentences, students might write whole dialogues and note the word stress throughout.

Ideas for Homework: Tell the students to choose a song they enjoy, find the lyrics, and create stress markings for them.

Five Ways to Practice Stress

Five ways to practice stress

Two weeks ago, we discussed word stress. Here are five ways to teach it.

First off Start by giving them a handout of, say, ten sentences. Write the first one on the board and underline the stressed words as you read it out loud.  Then, move towards having them do it on their own. Ask the class to discuss which words are stressed. Then, they can do it in groups. Finally, they can try it alone or even take a quiz.

Quizzes Nothing like a quiz to get students motivated. Ask students to listen to something and then underline the stressed words on a transcript.

Just the Stress Read something and only say the words you would stress when saying it. For diminished words, ask the students to fill in the blanks. (See this lesson plan.)

Music Listen to songs that have the same lines again and again. In a song, stressed words are often even more obvious. They’re louder, longer, and the pitch changes to boot. Here’s a song you might use. Here’s another.

Throw Your Hands in the Air Use physical gestures. Read sentences with the students. The more stressed a word is, the higher everyone’s hands go while reading.

Focus on Reductions Rather than focusing on the words that are stressed, point out all the unstressed words. Often, these words get said like one word. For example “Jawanna” = “Do you want to” and “I’m going to go” = “I’m gunna go”. Teach common ones so the students know which words usually aren’t stressed.

Beaker Method Beaker was a character on The Muppet Show (popular in the U.S. in the 1970s). He could only speak making “Meep!” sounds. He communicated entirely with word stress, timing, and intonation. Have your students try the same. Here’s a lesson plan to help.

 

Hands over Mouths

This is part of a series of lesson plans on word stress, timing, and intonation. Click here to read a short introduction.

Name: Hands over mouths

Prep Time: None (Enough time to print the worksheets)

Materials: Worksheets (Click to download or see below)

Primary Objective: Practice Word Stress

Other Benefits: Discuss Travel

Plan:

15 Minutes

Give the students the worksheets. First they should write their own endings to the sentences. Then they should match the given endings. Just walk around and check them as they’re writing.

15 Minutes

Now, read the sentences out loud for the students. They should listen and repeat. Pay careful attention to make sure that they are stressing the correct words. If you’d prefer, you can play this track for them instead.

5 Minutes

Now, students should look at their sheets and underline the stressed words.

5 Minutes

Next, read the sentences out loud and have the students repeat them again.

10 Minutes

Walk around and give specialized help as the students practice reading in pairs.

5 Minutes

Now, choose a random sentence and read it with your hands over your mouth. The students should guess which sentence you read. Do another. Ask them how they were able to guess if they couldn’t understand any sounds?

5 Minutes

Now the students should again practice reading the sentences in pairs, but this time with their hands over their mouths. Partners should guess which sentence they were reading.

Extension

After reading each sentence again, students should ask each other: Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Ideas for Homework: Write 10 travel sentences and underline the stressed words.

In case you have trouble downloading the handout, here are the sentences for this activity. Of course you can also write different sentences that better suit your class.

I like to travel alone, but sometimes I travel with other people.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you travel to?

When I fly, I prefer to have a window seat.

I spent too much time on the beach and got sunburned.

I’d much rather walk around a museum, than sit on a cruise ship.

There’s no way one suitcase would ever hold everything I want to bring.

The last place on earth I’d want to go is Alaska. It’s too cold!

I never forget to bring my towel when I travel; it’s the most important thing for me.

I just love tasting all the new foods when I’m at restaurants in new cities.

My advice is to travel in the fall; it’s not too cold, but it’s also not too busy.

Stressed Words

Stressed Words

Beaker can communicate with just stressed sounds, intonation, and timing. Can you?

Teachers, when you teach word stress, how do you explain it? What is a stressed word in a sentence? How can you tell which word it is? What’s more, why is it important? Here are answers to all of those questions. Here’s to hoping they’ll help you build and enhance lessons.

First, listen to this sentence.

I ate three eggs and two big bowls of cereal.

Now, listen again.

I ate three eggs and two big bowls of cereal.

Hopefully, you instantly see that the first time, the sentence is about eggs and the second is about the size of the bowls of cereal. We can tell because of the stressed words in the sentence (“eggs” in the first and “big” in the second).

How do we know which words are stressed? They’re louder and we stretch them out. For example “big” becomes “BIIIIIG”.

Why is word stress important? Well, it tells us which words are important in the sentence.

In the first sentence, the stress on “eggs” means the speaker really wants the listener to understand that word. Maybe the listener didn’t understand the first time they heard the sentence.

In the second sentence, the speaker wants to emphasize that they didn’t eat small bowls of cereal. Perhaps they were supposed to finish the cereal and are feeling defensive.

Finally, listen to a more regular reading of our sentence.

I ate three eggs and two big bowls of cereal.

The stressed words are: three, eggs, two, big, bowls, cereal.

Even if you only heard these six words, you would understand the sentence perfectly. (Assuming some context tells you that the sentence was in the past.) The words “I, ate, and, of” are less essential, so we don’t stress them.

When speaking naturally, we rarely stress each word in a sentence. In fact, some words are so diminished, you couldn’t possibly know what they are unless you know the language well enough to guess.

In lessons, if you can get the students used to listening for word stress and not worrying so much about catching every word, but rather knowing the kinds of words that are likely to be unstressed, listening will become that much easier.

Next week, you’ll see some suggestions for how to do just that.

Limericks Lesson Plan

This is part of a series of lesson plans on word stress, timing, and intonation. Click here to read a short introduction.

You might Read this Teaching Strategy on using limericks in the classroom before doing this lesson plan. You’ll find some limericks you might use at the beginning of the lesson.

Name: Limericks

Time: 1 hour

Prep Time: You’ll need to get a few limericks beforehand. (Here’s some.)

Materials: Some limericks

Primary Objective: Improve timing and word stress skills

Other Benefits: Practice counting syllables

Plan:

Present Some Limericks (15 minutes): Present three short limericks of the AABBA structure. Write them on the board one at a time. Discuss what they mean. Mention the number of syllables in each line of the poem and that they rhyme.

Writing Pomes as a Class (15 minutes): Now you’re going to write some new poems as a class. First, ask the class for a short sentence. Write it on the board. On a separate piece of the board, write the last word. Then ask the students for a bunch of words that rhyme with it. Write those on the board too. Now, ask the students for another short sentence that ends in one of those words. (Don’t worry about the syllable count just yet.)

You should end up with something like this…

Short sentence: I went to the store to buy a red dress.

Dress: Mess, Confess, Less, Guess, etc.

Second Short sentence: When I eat I make a mess.

Repeat the process to get the third and fourth lines of your poem

Now get one more sentence that rhymes with the first line.

Now, you should have something like this:

I went to the store to buy a red dress.

When I eat I make a mess

I hate using a spoon.

I hope you come soon.

When I buy things I want to pay less

It’s not a great poem, but it doesn’t matter. You’re just working on the form.

You’re almost done. Next, count the syllables in each line with your class. Change the sentences as needed to make the lines that rhyme have the same number of syllables. You can easily change the syllable counts in sentences by adding adjectives and adverbs. (e.g. I bought a book à I really bought a green book.)

Now you should have something like this:

I went to the store to buy a dress. 9

When I eat I really make a mess. 9

I hate using a spoon. 6

I hope you come home soon. 6

When I buy things I want to pay less. 9

Congratulations! You and your class have written a limerick. Now, write two more.

Write Poems in Groups (30 minutes): Finally, put the students into groups and have them write a few poems of their own.

Extension: Ask the students to draw a picture related to one of their poems and then present it to the class.

Ideas for Homework: Send the students on a hunt for limericks on the internet. At the beginning of the next class they can share them in groups.

Limericks

Limericks

Using Limericks to help students improve intonation, timing, and word stress.

A limerick is a humorous, five line poem where the first, second, and fifth lines rhyme. The third and fourth lines rhyme too (i.e. AABBA rhyming). Often, the lines that rhyme also have the same number of syllables.

After the bear caught the fish 7

A genie gave him a wish 7

The bear didn’t know what to say 8

So, he sent the genie away 8

“I already have the fish!” 7

Note: This site is helpful learning how to count syllables.

Limericks (and other poems) can be great for helping students improve speaking skills. They give English a little bit more structure and repetition makes it easier to feel intonation, timing, and word stress patterns.

When students write enough of their own poems, they’ll begin to instinctively write lines with the same number of syllables. This is when you know they’re really getting English patterns down.

Moreover, if students are paying attention to the syllable counts, they’ll begin to see how we can play with English to create new effects. Exceptions to rules drive students crazy, but not native speakers. We use and create exceptions to make English work for us. To wit: subjects don’t have to come at the beginning and words like “everyone” can be pronounced with three or four syllables.

The only problem is that limericks often have so much new vocabulary and strange grammar that teaching them can be tricky. So, with apologies to actual poets, we wrote four limericks that you might use in the classroom. Can you add anymore? Post in the comments!

There once was a sad man with a beer 9

From the side of his face fell a tear 9

Yes he was so sad, 5

His heart felt so bad, 5

When he saw his face in the mirror! 9

The rain fell upon the once dry ground 9

And sent everyone running around 9

They didn’t want to be wet 7

So they were filled with regret 7

For warm summer sunshine they moaned 9

Tim rode his blue bike to school 7

Brad took his time like a fool 7

Judy wandered alone 6

Bobby talked on the phone 6

Tim was all alone at school 7

Introduction to Word Stress, Timing, and Intonation (Prosody) Lesson Plans

Prosody (Word Stress, Timing, and Intonation) Lesson Plans

In recent years, language teachers have generally agreed that teaching word stress, timing, and intonation are very important. Not every class, nor every student, needs prosody work; but many do.

Fine and dandy, but how to teach it exactly? This is the introduction to a series of lesson plans on prosody. The lessons will appear in the coming weeks.

Just a few notes:

First, in the introduction to Sue F. Miller’s wonderful book “Targeting Pronunciation: Communicating Clearly in English”, she says that the most important thing in any lesson on prosody is listening and repeating. Word to that and you’ll see it a lot here.

Also, there needs to be something to practice. Material is provided here around various themes. You can easily switch it up though. Using sentences and vocabulary from your units is a great idea.

Click here to see all the lesson plans.

Here are some other helpful posts on prosody.

• What is intonation?
• How to teach intonation
• Stressed Words
• Five ways to practice stress in the classroom
• How to explain timing
• How to teach timing
• Limericks

accentmaster.com

Website Review: accentmaster.com

In short: They sell software or lessons to help students improve their accents. The software is different depending on your language (so you don’t waste time practicing sounds that are easy for you). In addition, they don’t just focus on making sounds, but also on things like intonation and word stress.

For students: This software (or the lessons) will definitely help you improve, but if it’s too expensive, remember to listen to as much English as possible and try to repeat what you hear. When you repeat, focus on the sounds, but also on intonation, word stress and timing. Try to copy things exactly.

For teachers: Check out the YouTube site at youtube.com/user/AccentMasterLynn. Unless your students have a pretty high level, these’ll be too tough for them to understand, but you can learn a lot about what’s important when teaching speaking.

Ten Sentences

This is part of a series of lesson plans on word stress, timing, and intonation. Click here to read a short introduction.

Name: Ten Sentences

Time: 1 hour

Prep Time: 10 Minutes

Materials: Personality Adjectives (Click to download or see below)

Primary Objective: Improve Word Stress Skills

Other Benefits: Practice Personality Adjectives

Plan:

10 Minutes

Print and present the Personality Adjectives with personality adjectives. (Or write everything on the board.) Have the students fill it in as best they can.

15 Minutes

Now, read the sentences out loud for the students. They should listen and repeat. Pay careful attention to make sure that they are stressing the correct words. If you’d prefer, you can play this track for them instead.

5 Minutes

Now, students should look at their sheets and underline the stressed words.

5 Minutes

Next, read the sentences out loud and have the students repeat them again.

10 Minutes

Walk around and give specialized help as the students practice reading in pairs.

5 Minutes

Finally, have the students listen and repeat one more time as a class

10 Minutes

Review the meanings of the personality adjectives. Ask the students to choose four words and write new sentences with them. They should underline the stressed words in their sentences.

Ideas for Homework

Ask the students to find examples of some of the personality adjectives in real English materials. (They can search for them on the internet.) During the next class, they can present the sentences.

Words

Lazy, Happy, Funny, Interesting, Quiet, Witty, Sweet, Demanding, Hardworking, Carefree

Fill In The Blanks

I envy her. She’s always smiling. She’s a really ______________________ person.

Isn’t she an ______________________ professor? I just love listening to her lectures.

She’s always writing songs for me. When I first met her, I thought she was just a ______________________ girl, but now that I know her, I think she’s super ______________________.

I like my boss, but he’s too ______________________. If we don’t relax sometimes, we’ll go crazy!

Sometimes I wish I could be more ______________________, like my brother. Nothing bothers him.

If you want to be successful, the most important thing is to be ______________________.

Why are you always so ______________________?! Clean your room! Do your homework! Do anything!

Why is Jake my best friend? You know, he makes me laugh. He’s ______________________. That’s really important to me.

I wish I were more ______________________. I never think of good things to say until hours later.

Answers

I envy her. She’s always smiling. She’s a really happy person.

Isn’t she an interesting professor? I just love listening to her lectures.

She’s always writing songs for me. When I first met her, I thought she was just a quiet girl, but now that I know her, I think she’s super sweet.

I like my boss, but he’s too demanding. If we don’t relax sometimes, we’ll go crazy!

Sometimes I wish I could be more carefree, like my brother. Nothing bothers him.

If you want to be successful, the most important thing is to be hardworking.

Why are you always so lazy?! Clean your room! Do your homework! Do anything!

Why is Jake my best friend? You know, he makes me laugh. He’s funny. That’s really important to me.

I wish I were more witty. I never think of good things to say until hours later.