When Americans talk they stress the CONTENT and FOCUS words in a sentence. That’s because these words are the most important for sentence meaning. English speakers will reduce the function words in a sentence because these words are not key to meaning.
In spoken American English each sentence or phrase contains:
A Focus word-the most important word
Content words-very important for meaning
Function words-not important for meaning
Josef Essberger, the founder of the great website EnglishClub.com says that word stress and sentence stress are “the golden key” to English pronunciation. Many pronunciation teachers feel the same!
You can see some examples of sentence stress by reading this article in my Accent Reduction Classroom.
Tags: Accent Reduction Classes, american accent, American English Pronunciation, american pronunciation, Sentence stress
