Teach American English Pronunciation

Overview

When you hear Americans pronounce words you'll notice that they always stress one syllable in each word more that the others. We call this emphasis major stress. The syllable with major stress will sound louder, longer and clearer that the other syllables in the word. The vowel sound in this syllable is lengthened.

Syllable stress is important in spoken American English because it helps to create the rhythm of the language.

Three Rules for Syllable Stress in English Words

Below are three rules to help you choose which syllables to stress. Read each rule. Then pronounce the example words and sentences in each chart.

1. Stress is usually placed on the syllable that contains the root or base word. Here are some examples

unPAID- The rent was unpaid for three months.
inCLUDE- Please include your name and address.
preDICT-Thomas predicts it will be sunny tomorrow.
unABLE- I'm unable to help you today.
reMIND- Will you remind me to call home after class?
prePARE- Richard said he would prepare dinner tonight.

2. Word prefixes are usually NOT stressed. Here are some examples:

SLOWly-Christina walks very slowly.
FASTer- John walks faster than I do.
SPEAKing- Jean likes speaking in class.
CAREful- Please be careful walking home at night.
SMALLest- Lucy is the smallest person in the class.
DRINKable -The water in the bathroom is undrinkable!

3. Most two-syllable nouns (90%) are stressed on the first syllable. Here are some examples:

MARket-Sally buys bananas at the market.
TEAcher-Mr. Williams is my computer teacher.
FRIday -We're going to the movies on Friday.
PAper- I need to buy paper for the printer.
KITchen -The kitchen is a mess!
BROther Robert's brother is very kind.

These are just some of the rules and patterns that you can teach your students about syllable stress in words. To learn more rules check out the books for teaching pronunciation books by Avery & Ehrlich and Celce-Murcia below

Since English is not a phonetic language there is not always a one-on-one relationship between the letters in the English alphabet and spoken sounds. This can cause problems when you want to pronounce English words.

Correct pronunciation can sometimes be a problem even for native speakers. Often native speakers will be familiar with a word--they will know its meaning and how to spell it--but will not know how to pronounce it unless they consult a dictionary or someone tells them how to pronounce it.

The 26 letters in the English (Roman) alphabet make many different sounds in spoken American English. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, American English has 25 consonant sounds and up to 18 vowel sounds (the exact number of sounds may vary from region to region).

Let's look at some sound-spelling situations that are frequently confusing to students who are learning to speak English. We'll start with the letter "s".

When you are speaking English the letter "s" can represent several different sounds depending on its location in a word.

In the word same the "s" sounds like /s/.
In the word leisure the "s" sounds like /zh/.
In the word design the "s" sounds like /z/.

The fact that "s" has three sounds can be very confusing when you are learning to speak English from a written text!

Let's look at some English words that begin with the consonant "c".
city
century
cat
cut
cot

The letter "c" in the words city and century sound like /s/. The letter "c" in the words cat and cut and cot sound like /k/.

Look carefully at the spelling of the five words above. Can you figure out the rule or pattern used to determine the spoken sound of the letter "c"?

The rule is that 'c' sounds like /s/ when it falls before the vowels "i" and "e". It sounds like the /k/ when it falls before the vowels "a", "o" and "u".

You can see from the examples above that the position of a consonant within a word can change the way it sounds. This happens frequently when you are pronouncing English.

Since English is not phonetic you will need to learn some of these sound/spelling patterns you need to learn if you want to improve your American English pronunciation.