Author: British Council | Published on 1 October 2022
Sentence stress is important to communication in English – words that are important to the message are stressed more.
Because the position of important words depends on the sentence structure, this means that there are many possible stress patterns.
Using ‘no sound; dialogues is a fun way to help learners with sentence stress.
Listen
Listen to these short dialogues.
[audio]
|
1. A: What time is it? B: It’s half past nine. 2. A: Are you hungry? B: No, I’ve just had lunch. 3. A: Where’s your book? B: I don’t know. 4. A: Can you help me? B: Yes, of course. |
Notice how the stress pattern in each sentence is different and how this creates different rhythms.
Introduce
Write dialogue 1 on the board. Read it aloud 2 times. Write the 2 stress patterns on the board. Ask learners to work in pairs to match the dialogue lines with the stress patterns.
Take feedback: mark the correct stress patterns above the dialogue, read the dialogue aloud again. Ask pairs to practise the dialogue.
Write dialogues 2 and 3 on the board. Read them aloud 2 times. Write the stress patterns on the board as a. b. c. d. Ask learners to work in pairs to match the 4 dialogue lines with the stress patterns.
Take feedback: mark the correct stress patterns above the dialogues, read the dialogues aloud again. Ask pairs to practise the dialogues.
‘No sound’ dialogues
Demonstrate: Clap the 1st line of one of the 3 dialogues. Repeat. Ask different learners to answer you by clapping the correct answer. They should not speak.
Learners work in pairs. They take turns to clap the 1st line of a dialogue and answer. Monitor, support and correct sentence stress.
Extend: Write dialogue 4 on the board. Learners copy and practise the dialogue. They mark the sentence stress.
Take feedback: learners write the stress patterns on the board above the dialogue.
While learners may find it difficult to produce stress patterns correctly, helping them to hear these can help them with listening. And you can integrate ‘no sound’ dialogues into any everyday lesson when you practise new grammar or vocabulary.