How to Stress a Syllable The Shape of Stress

In this American English pronunciation video,

we’re going to talk about the shape
of a stressed syllable.

I’ve been talking a lot recently with my private
students about the shape of stress. Stress

isn’t simply a higher pitch and a lower pitch.
Yes-ter-day. Da-da-da. But actually, there’s

a swoop from one pitch to the next, so there’s
always a gliding feeling. Yesterday. When

my students are able to switch into this mode,
it makes a world of difference. All of a sudden,

the speech is much more natural, is much more
American. This applies even to one-syllable

words and one-syllable sentences. For example,
yes, yes. It’s not yes, yes, all on one pitch;

that’s very flat. Yes. Yes. Hi. Hi. Hi – do
you hear that change in pitch, that shape

in that syllable? Very different from hi,
hi, hi. Hi.

So the shape of a stressed syllable has the
pitch gliding up and the pitch gliding down.

Let’s take for example the word ‘hello’. Hello,
-llo. Do you hear how the change in pitch

isn’t abrupt. It slides from lower to higher
and lower again. This is very different from

hello, hello, an abrupt pitch change of two
flat ideas. Hell-o, hell-o. Hello.

It’s not a bad idea to practice words and
sentences very under pace, sliding from pitch

to pitch. For example: hey, how are you? Then,
when you speed it up, don’t think of switching

back into speaking mode. Think of taking this
stretched out, gliding from pitch to pitch

speech, and speeding it up. We don’t want
the character of that uhh– to change. You

want to keep that in your speech. So please
keep this in mind, and do practice speaking

under pace sometimes. Stress is much more
than a change in pitch, it’s how you change

the pitch.

That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s
English.