Five Suggestions for Reading Aloud… (And general pronunciation)

1) Add a pause after punctuation marks – most commonly after commas and full stops.

They are going to visit their grandparents, and after that, they are going to Dubai Mall for a
couple of hours. Tomorrow morning, they will get up early, have a big breakfast, and go
swimming.

2) Use appropriate sentence stress after full stops, semi-colons ( ;) and question marks
Generally to signal the end of a sentence (before a full stop), the last word goes down in pitch,
but for a question, it goes up.

Examples:
We are going to the cinema tomorrow night. /Are we going to the cinema tomorrow night?
We are having a practice exam tomorrow./ Are we having a practice exam tomorrow?

3) Use sentence stress before and after commas, dashes (-) and colons (:)

For these types of punctuation, the voice generally rises before the punctuation and falls after it

Examples:
We are buying a new car, which will be delivered tomorrow.
We need to buy different kinds of fruit: apple, bananas, and oranges would be good.

4) Think about Word Stress

In longer words, there is always one syllable that has more stress than the others. You
need to learn what these are. For example, information- should be: in-for-MA-tion

Can you underline the stressed syllable in these words?

agreement determine recognize

argument development resit
appreciated forfeit response
challenge management seventy
committee opponent success
complaint organized surprise
descent prevalent welcome
detailed purchase

TB 2016
 5) Stressing Key Content Words

English is s stress timed language which means that important/key words that have more important
content get more stress

This includes:

1) nouns- names, places, etc.

2) most important verbs – for example: visit, construct, buy..
3) adjectives- beautiful interesting expensive smart etc.
4) adverbs: often, carefully, usually
5) Negative modals: can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, etc.

Function words generally do not receive stress. This includes:

1) determiners: the, a, some, a few

2) auxiliary verbs: am, can, were
3) Prepositions: before, next to, opposite
4) Conjunctions: but, while , as
5) Pronouns : They, she, us

The beautiful mountain appeared lost in the distance . (13 syllables)

He can come on Sunday as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening . (22 syllables)

Underline key content words in these sentences and then practice with a partner:

Sheikha is coming over tonight. We are going to work on our homework together.

We should have visited some more castles while we were traveling through the back roads of
France.

Mohammed bought a new car last Friday.

They are looking forward to your visit next January.

Exciting discoveries lie in Amna's future.

Would you like to come over and play a game of tennis?

Shakespeare wrote many plays and poems.

As you might have expected, he has just thought of a new approach to the problem.

TB 2016
ANSWERS TO QUIZ ON STRESS: The stressed syllable is underlined in each
word below.

agreement, argument, appreciated, challenge, committee, complaint, descent,

detailed, determine, development, forfeit, management, opponent, organized,
prevalent, purchase, recognize, resit, response, seventy, success, surprise, welcome.

TB 2016