Word stress in sentences

Americans stress words in sentences that are important to the meaning of the sentence. They carry
thecontent of the sentence. Basically, if you took these content words out of the sentence, you would not
understand the meaning of that sentence.

Content Words

main verbs

nouns

adjectives

adverbs

negatives

wh-words

interjections

Examples | Listen & Repeat

I HAVE to GO to SCHOOL.

I WANT my BROTHER to WIN.

Its NOT the BEST IDEA.

Function Words
Remember, rhythm and musicality in your speech is not just about stressing, but also requires destressing, weakening.
In English we de-stress the non-essential, non-content words in a sentence, called the function
words.These function words are made weaker, and sometimes practically disappear from a sentence.
Function words include:

articles

conjunctions

prepositions
pronouns

auxiliary verbs

Listen and Repeat

(Function words written in lower case)

I HAVE to GO to SCHOOL.

I WANT my BROTHER to WIN.

Its NOT the BEST IDEA.