{"id":231,"date":"2008-08-24T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/?p=231"},"modified":"2015-04-23T17:30:43","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T21:30:43","slug":"content-stress-is-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/content-stress-is-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Content Stress is Best"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><u><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">As a general rule,<\/span><\/u><\/p>\n<p>\u25aa Stressed words in a sentence are considered <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">content words<\/span><\/strong>. These include <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">nouns (<\/span><\/strong>e.g. <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">kitchen,<\/span><\/em> <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Peter<\/span><\/em>), (most) <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">main verbs<\/span><\/strong> (e.g. <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">visit, construct<\/span><\/em>), <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">adjectives<\/span><\/strong> (e.g. <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">beautiful,<\/span><\/em> interesting), and <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">adverbs<\/span><\/strong> (e.g. often, carefully).<\/p>\n<p>\u25aa Non-stressed words are considered <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">function words<\/span><\/strong>. These include determiners (e.g.: <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">the, a, an<\/span><\/em>), auxiliary verbs (e.g.: <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">is,<\/span><\/em> <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">am, were<\/span><\/em>), prepositions (e.g.: <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">before, of, in<\/span><\/em>), conjunctions (e.g.: <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">but, and, so<\/span><\/em>), and pronouns (e.g.: <em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">they, she, he<\/span><\/em>)<u><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><br \/>\n<!--[endif]--><\/span><\/u><\/p>\n<p><u><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;\">Read the following sentence aloud: <\/span><\/u><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial;\"><br \/>\n<em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The <\/span><\/em><strong><i><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">beautiful mountain appeared transfixed<\/span><\/i><\/strong><em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> in the <\/span><\/em><strong><i><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">distance<\/span><\/i><\/strong><em><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><u>Now read this sentence aloud: <\/u><br \/>\nHe can <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">come<\/span><\/strong> on <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Saturdays<\/span><\/strong> as long as he doesn&#8217;t have to <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">do<\/span><\/strong> any <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">homework<\/span><\/strong> in the <strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">evening<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Notice that the first sentence actually takes about the same time to speak well! Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are five stressed words in each sentence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a general rule, \u25aa Stressed words in a sentence are considered content words. These include nouns (e.g. kitchen, Peter), (most) main verbs (e.g. visit, construct), adjectives (e.g. beautiful, interesting), and adverbs (e.g. often, carefully). \u25aa Non-stressed words are considered function words. These include determiners (e.g.: the, a, an), auxiliary verbs (e.g.: is, am, were), [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[535,537],"tags":[617,618,712,687],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-cultural-communications","category-speak-english-better","tag-accent-reduction","tag-pronunciation","tag-speaking-strategies","tag-stress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}