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The Pronunciation Lounge

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Where to pause naturally in English

Episode 250407 / 07 Apr 2025

Free worksheet and transcript

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Watch Episode 8
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How can you use natural pauses in English?

Pauses and the flow of speech are very important for sounding natural when speaking. By pause we mean a complete gap between words, or just a slowing down of speech. If you pause in a strange part of a sentence then it can be difficult to understand you, so it's important to get it right!

We can't just pause or slow down anywhere – some groups of words should stay together and we can call these 'word groups'. Pauses should be in places that break up the sentence into logical parts. Each section needs to have a grammatical structure with a chunk of meaning. That's why, in speaking, pauses often come between grammatical structures, phrases, clauses or whole sentences. In writing these chunks are often indicated by punctuation.

  • Actually, I love making a roast dinner, but I don't do it very often – no time!
  • Actually / I love making a roast dinner / but I don't do it very often / no time

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To do

Practise by using the worksheet on this page. The clip we heard came from an episode of 6 Minute English – listen to the whole programme.

Next

How do you know which words to stress when speaking English? Watch Episode 8 here and learn about sentence stress.

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