by Kivilcim Somuncuoglu |
Visualized Word Stress
The resource is a step-by-step pronunciation exercise that can used in an online or f2f class to go over the word stress using a set of words that visualizes how the word stress functions in English.
For speakers of languages that are not stress-timed, it can be hard to figure out how word stress works; thus, I benefit from the visualizations with my classes (mainly L1 Turkish - a syllable-timed language where the stress often falls on the last syllable- speakers).
Resource Type: Activities
Audience: Secondary, Adult, University
Audience Language Proficiency: Intermediate
Duration: 15 minutes
Materials And Technology:
The exercise can be shared as is during an online class but the teacher will need a projector in a f2f classroom setting.
Objective:
The objective of the exercise is to visualize the word stress to help foster a "sense" for correct pronunciation.
Outcome:
This exercise will help students notice the syllable patterns, and at the end they will be able to identify stressed and unstressed syllables.
Activity Description:
The pdf includes a set of multisyllabic words that are first shown as is. On every second slide, the same word is divided into their syllables, and each one is numbered. On every third slide, the stressed syllable is highlighted with a blue dot.
The dots over the words stand for the individual syllables, and the number that accompanies the dots can be used to make the activity more interactive/Socratic. The students can be asked to guess on which syllable the stress falls on, and they can experiment with different versions to find out which one sounds more "correct" the teacher can model different versions to demonstrate how the word sounds with correct vs. various incorrect stress patterns.
Useful Links: A slide version of the resource can be downloaded here.
Supporting Files:
Visualized Word Stress.pdf
TESOL Interest Section: Adult Education, English as a Foreign Language, English for Specific Purposes