How to Pronounce: Stress and Listening

0:01Hello, I'm John Russell.

0:04Today we will build our pronunciation skills by doing an exercise that involves listening.

0:12Why is listening important for speaking?

0:16Well, if you cannot hear or identify differences in speech, then you will have a hard time producing

0:23those differences when you speak.

0:26Here is the exercise.

0:28We are going to pay careful attention to content words and function words.

0:34Content words are nouns and verbs, words that carry the most meaning.

0:40Function words are grammatical words, prepositions, articles, and so on.

0:46English speakers generally stress content words and reduce function words.

0:52Read the sentence, then consider which words are content and which are function words.

0:59Now listen to me as I read the sentence.

1:03Note that I will read it slowly and exaggerate my language.

1:08Can you identify the content words?

1:11As artificial intelligence has developed, the meaning of AGI has changed over time.

1:21Here are the content words I said louder.

1:25Artificial intelligence developed meaning AGI changed time.

1:35Now I will read the entire sentence a bit more naturally.

1:40As artificial intelligence has developed, the meaning of AGI has changed over time.

1:48So to recap, the idea is to develop creative ways to stress content words.

1:55That's all for today.

1:57Keep up the good work.