Gain 15 Minutes of Practice with Word Stress | Accent Training

I'm sure one of your goals is to sound more natural in English. Let's continue to work on word stress to strengthen your rhythm in English. I invite you to join Nitesh, my student from India. If you're new to my channel, welcome. I'm Jennifer, and I teach American English for confident, effective communication. If you want my free digital downloads to boost your fluency, then visit my website englishwithjennifer.com. Hey Nitesh. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic, Jennifer. How about you? Fantastic as usual. I'm doing terrific. Oh, damn. That's crazy. Yeah. Good day. Good day. All right. So we're going to keep going with stress, right? Now we know that words have syllables, and words with two or more syllables have a stress syllable. And we talked about stress syllables doing something differently than the other ones, like Hindi, India, teacher, right? What's happening? I said the vowel sounds. The vowel sounds are becoming longer. Sales. He's a salesperson. It becomes longer, usually a little louder and at a higher pitch. So our voice goes up. So when I say teacher, even if I don't say the sounds and I hum it, you're going to hear my voice go up. Teacher, right? Yeah. Teacher. Yes. Teacher. Same thing. You won't know whether I'm saying teacher or Hindi, but it's the same pattern. Hindi. Yeah. Good. Same thing with English. English. So a stress syllable means that the vowel sound is longer, louder, and at a higher pitch. Okay? You asked a great question yesterday, like, how do I know? How do I know these patterns? Like, well, you learn them. And if you ask a native speaker, they're not going to be able to explain it to you because they learned these patterns early on and we just internalize them. But we can become aware of them and then you can internalize them. And this will help. When you learn new words, they're going to fall into certain patterns and you can predict what the pronunciation is going to be. This is also why, let's say, an American learning Spanish or French or another language, we might mess up the stress in those languages because we're using the patterns that we're familiar with. Okay, so we're going to go over some patterns, right? I know drills are not the most exciting stuff, but we got to do it, we got to practice so that you feel the patterns and you start to internalize them. So when we have two syllable nouns, usually the stress is on the first, like we just did. English, Hindi, teacher. So repeat after me. These are all words that we've been practicing, words that are important for you. Girlfriend. You're the boyfriend. Boyfriend. Ticket. Was that better? That was, okay. Ticket. Clients. And you have two syllables, two vowel sounds. I am clients. Clients. And then if we have two vowel sounds, we'll get more into this a bit later, but you can start now. Link. So we don't have clients, but clients. Clients. Use a little bit of a Y sound. Clients. Say yents, yents. Yents, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So it's going to be like, sort of like, let me write this. Clients. Yents. Yents, yents, right? Clients. Yes, I have clients. So T is silent somehow, right? No, it's NTS, client. One client, two or more clients. Clients. I have many clients. Better, good, good. So often with two-syllable nouns, the stress is on the first one, just as we did, okay? Now if we go into verbs, the pattern can be different. Often with the verbs, stress is on the second. That's why we say hmm, hmm. Explain. Hold on. What do you just did? Like hmm, hmm. Can you do that again? Because that helps me understand really well. We just practiced before like Hindi and English. Hmm, hmm. Now we're doing Bum, bum. Dun, dun. Hmm, hmm. Do you feel that? Hold on. Let me do that first. Hmm, hmm. Something like that, right? Yes. The first one should be a little lower, and the second one should be a little higher. And you're lengthening it. You're lengthening that sound. Say for me, explain. Explain. Good. Include. Begin. Enjoy. Belong. Okay. We just talked about things that we enjoy. I enjoy music. You enjoy sales. Enjoy. Okay. Was that better? Yes. Like when we were doing like warps? Yes. Okay. You get it? Yeah, really cool things that I've learned. You're feeling it too. It's fine when you're practicing, and it's good when you're practicing to do something to feel that rhythm. I like using my hands. If you want to move with your body, that's fine. You're not going to always talk like this, but at the same time, right now, you need to feel it, right? Let's practice a bit more. Stress the first syllable of these two syllable nouns. Market. Package. Discount. Money. Profit. Office. Partner. Colleague. Now stress the second syllable of these two syllable verbs. Invest. Rely. Depend. Increase. Improve. Prefer. Are there exceptions? Yes, definitely. Here are some two-syllable verbs with stress on the first syllable. Listen and repeat. Are you feeling the stress? Use your hands or your body somehow to feel the rhythm. Go back and review as needed. All right, so we just practiced the patterns with nouns like English, teacher. Then we looked at the stress patterns with verbs, which usually reverses it. Explain, enjoy. There are exceptions. So there, for example, are some words that can be nouns and verbs and the stress just stays the same regardless of how you're using that word. For example, offer. Can you help me understand? You can make an offer. For example, make an offer. That's a noun. I make an offer. Correct, but you also offer help. That's a verb. Offer a package. Offer help. So even though I'm using it differently grammatically, the stress pattern stays the same. Same thing with answer. Answer. You give an answer. What's your answer? That's a noun. Or you say, Jennifer, please answer my question. Jennifer, please answer my question. That's a verb. Answer. Same pattern. Travel. If we talk about a travel agent, I'm using travel as a noun to modify agent. What kind of agent? Travel agent. Travel. Or, I like to travel. I like to travel. Travel. Good. So offer, answer, travel. Those are words that keep a pattern. Regardless of whether it's a noun or a verb. So you mean to say whenever there is a noun, what we do is that we focus on the first syllable. And if there is a verb, we focus on the second one. And if there is a noun plus verb, we focus on the first one. Patterns always have exceptions. These are guidelines. These are patterns that you can generally follow. There are going to be some words as well that they do shift. So for example, record and record. It is basically the same word, but as a noun we say record and as a verb we say record. But again, it's all about learning groups of words and patterns. Some of these you've already learned and you know them. Other ones you're going to have to be like, oh my gosh, I was saying it wrong all this time. It's actually explain. So you'll be more aware of that. With adjectives, it helps to know the root. I don't know how much awareness you have of word formation, but it's nice to have some background with word formation. How are words formed? We have a basic root and we can add things to the beginning called a prefix. And we can add parts to the end called a suffix. If you can recognize the root, often roots are stressed. Often roots are stressed. Either the prefix or the suffix. The prefix and the suffix are not usually stressed. Not usually. You focus on the root, especially with adjectives. The last time we met, we talked about how our friends and family might describe us. We used words like caring. Funny. Do you feel the pattern? Caring. Funny. Caring. Funny. Helpful. Honest. I'm always busy. You're clever. You're thoughtful. You're so thoughtful. I hope your girlfriend says you're so thoughtful. Yes, she always does. Good, good, good. So do you see the pattern we're doing? Honest. Clever. Funny. A lot of adjectives end in Y. So that's why we have that would be an ending. Funny. Busy. We also have a lot of adjectives that end in F-U-L. Like full of equality. So helpful. Thoughtful. We don't stress the full. We stress that root word. The root word. Helpful. Thoughtful. It is a common pattern but with adjectives it's better to think about the fact that we usually stress the root word, not an ending like Y. We stress funny, busy and not F-U-L. We stress thoughtful, helpful. And usually in adjectives, the first term like if there is no prefix the first one is the root word or if there is a prefix or suffix the middle one is the root word. It can't be. Like you're kind. But if I say what he did was unkind. If I use un un is a prefix. It means not. Unhappy. Unkind. Unhappy. So like the root word would become happy and then prefix would become prefix would become just un. And I'm not going to stress the un. I get that. Just from your perspective so I understand better. Let's say if we have to let's say pronounce happy. What would we do is that we would stress on the first syllable like happy right? But if the word is written in such a word like unhappy so then we will stress on the unhappy right? Correct. It stays the same right? Happy unhappy. So whether I say happy H-A-P gets the stress not the Y and if I add the prefix un the root word is still H-A-P the happy. Okay. I get that. And that's basically a pattern you're going to follow if we form other words like happiness if I'm going to add on N-E-S-S to form a noun I'm still going to focus on the root happiness. Happiness. Yes. Was that better? Yes. You say to your girlfriend I care about your happiness. I care about your happiness. Yes. Because I want to be thoughtful and caring. Okay. Because I want to be thoughtful and caring. Yes. Oh you are. Okay. There are going to be exceptions. And it might be the origin of the word what we call etymology. So where we borrow words from. Where they came from. For example French has different patterns. If we borrow something from French that might mean we're using a different pattern. Unique. Okay. For example. You're so unique. Unique. Unique. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be I don't want to be alone. Good. Good. How about you? What adjectives describe you? What adjectives describe the people you love? Do you know anyone who's helpful, caring, or clever? Do you know someone who's unique? Go back and practice all those two-syllable adjectives with Matisse. That's all for now. But before I go, I'll ask you to hit that like and subscribe button so that you don't miss any of the lessons I have planned for you. If you'd like live interaction and feedback, then join my English with Jennifer community on Patreon, where we practice all skills for confident, effective communication. The link is in the video description. Hope to see you again soon. As always, thanks for watching and happy studies!