Close menu

The Pronunciation Lounge

Medium level

How to use sentence stress

Episode 250414 / 14 Apr 2025

Free worksheet and transcript

____________________________________________________________________________

Watch all episodes
____________________________________________________________________________

Do you know how to use sentence stress? (also called prominence)

Stressed words or syllables are said more forcefully – they can be louder, higher or longer and the vowel sound is clear. We can use stress to show what the most important words in the sentence are. This helps to make the meaning clear.

Sometimes there's no specific word that you need to stress, but we still stressed the words which show the meaning the best. These usually come close to the end of the phrase. 

  • I'm looking for the cafe. 
  • You should read it again. 

We can also use stress to change the focus or meaning of what we're saying.

  • Phil won a bear.
  • Phil won a bear.

And we can use stress to show a contrast (a difference) between words. 

  • Her name is Alice, not Alex. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To do

Practise by using the worksheet on this page. The clip we heard came from an episode of Learning English from the News – listen to the whole programme.

Next

Do you want to learn about connected speech? Try Tim's Pronunciation Workshop. 

The Pronunciation Lounge dhihoo kanaa

Hojii manaa

PDF'dhaan gad-buusi