The Teachers' Room: Teaching word stress

Word stress is important - incorrectly pronounced words can cause misunderstandings, confusion, embarrassment and frustration. Join Dan and Sian as they discuss tips for teaching word stress.
This is a natural conversation, so no transcript is included.
For more videos and content that will help you learn English, visit our website: www.bbclearningenglish.com

[@deanmaryam8007]

just teaching about word stress to my students a week ago and hope that I found this earlier. Thankyou anyway this is so useful! :)

[@msmith6617]

I'm having soo much fun watching these videos. I'm so happy I came across this

[@minie0502]

I'm looking forward to more videos related to teaching from BBC Learning English - Teacher's Room. Thanks a lot for all of the techniques. They are extremely useful. Thanks, Shawn and Dan. You guys are amazing.

[@marie-danielleoreilly3468]

I love your way of teaching English. Thank you so much !🇨🇭🇨🇭🇨🇭

[@m2gcardhunter]

Thank you teachers. This video is so useful.

[@ruthogunro2746]

Hey guys, Love love love your videos. Thanks for your dedication to making and sharing these videos. You're awesome!!

[@ulvishiraliyev9205]

Thank you guys so much. The series is awesome and worth watching! I was wondering if you could give any tips on how words in English get stressed. What I mean is if there are any rules, observations, or patterns that teachers/students could discover so that there is no need for double-checking with dictionaries regarding the word stresses. Thank you a lot in advance!

[@centaur8511]

Wonderful teachers, thanks.

[@theterminator8854]

Thank you, you're great!

[@Ta-zb5ow]

thanks teachers amazing lesson we need more from your experience

[@rabindrabajracharya8561]

Such a wonderful teachers👏👏👏

[@phuctruong1993]

What an amazing video!!! I have another methodology for my pronunciation class that I combine the practising part with the game "clap the board". After teaching them how to pronounce words, I divide class into two groups and have them play game to revise what they have learnt. I write those words on the board and then read one aloud. The representative of one team who claps that word first and pronounce it correctly will get points for his team. At the end of the game, which team having more points will win the game with a giveaway prize. This method helps me much in preventing class from sleepiness.

[@bbclearningenglish]

Thanks for your tips.

[@ngocthaovy94]

good tips. Thanks.

[@sevenseascarollondon]

I love you, guys!! Thank you. It will help a lot.

[@commelinales]

Nice shirts! I love them.

[@thalathawiritthamullatoc1652]

the best teachers in the world

[@samuelsabih432]

Thank you teachers, just like what I do .. man I love teaching kids

[@tawfiklibya216]

loved the idea very much! pls pls i need more useful stuff.

[@alismart2867]

I can see great chemistry among the teachers,good choice!

[@monomakes]

It can help to list the ways in which stress is placed - volume, pitch or length, with the first being the most COmmon.

[@MrNguyenducviet]

Thank you so much for the video. I can learn and understand more if the video has subtitles.

[@ShabbirHussain-in2le]

Brilliant! I am in Listening/ Speaking process in stress patterns words & I hope more activities on stress words & sentences , please help me more now!

[@saez5108]

Hello Dan and Sian! Very useful and interesting programs, both Teacher' s room and Learner's question. I hope that you make more videos for beginners. For example, how to teach vocabulary like fruit, clothes, etc, for adults with limited formal education. What about teaching grammar for this specific group? Tips? I also hope you will make more videos showing us more teaching tips for online teaching in the Time of COVID-19.

[@945454554]

Hi, I have watched lots of episodes and I expect that this series will continue to update each week. I have applied the interesting ideas from your program into my practice both as a learner and a teacher.

[@bbclearningenglish]

Hi hoang. Thank you for your comment. We are glad you found our series helpful. You might like to visit our website. We have more videos, guides and quizzes: www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/

[@haruyasumi616]

"I'm a box kinda guy - I like squares, rigid"... ... draws a bunch of weird B shapes, instead of boxes! I'm a long way from being able to teach yet. But I think I've already decided I'll try teaching stress by stabbing the air at different heights as if I'm Christina Aguillera singing high and low notes.

[@Sergio2006A]

Loved it!

[@susaimarynathan469]

Last part is hilarious 😂

[@w_digital]

Excellent video And I want that shirt. They could send it to Barranquilla. Colombia to Venezuelan 👏👏👏😎😎

[@mhmdzerdeshtkurdi2301]

Very useful !

[@Ianvalenzuela012]

so fun your video's greetings from Guatemala city 🙌🙌👋

[@anasbenhaddou7827]

Guys, you made my day ❤

[@zahrahaghbin3035]

Both are amazing ! I like it

[@haridanjhon8103]

Thank you.

[@markster8456]

Might look a bit silly, but looks fun and effective! :)

[@lolaquiroz5336]

Great video! Thanks a lot

[@bbclearningenglish]

You're welcome!

[@Quyanxi]

Many thanks for the brilliant video. Love the t-shirts too, but I can't seem to be able to find them anywhere on your website. Could you please advise as to how we could get them? Cheers

[@bbclearningenglish]

Hi Milo Dvorak. We are glad you like our video. About the T-shirts ... all gone, I'm afraid. Sorry.

[@ThaoLe-yo3iy]

so great

[@engin7787]

wonderful !

[@martymitch8375]

I want that t-shirt! I'm the student!

[@MOSTAFAMAHMOUD-vr2ro]

Could you please bbc learning english make episodes about poetry in which you explain rhyme, rhythm, methaphor, simily, personification, metonymy, etc.

[@raed2178]

I love you, guys 😀

[@helinkhalil8963]

Veeery useful lessons thank you

[@techyjohn3386]

Thanks for the great explanation, can you please tell how to use "this that these those their them they it" to refer to the part of previous sentense in an article with 2, 3 different paragraph. (Newspaper article)

[@yaninaarias5286]

Hahahah I love you guys, you are so funny!! By the way, I really need some videos of intonation ( tones, tone unit, etc), I'm studying for being a teacher at university so I'll have exams soon. Can you help me? Thanks you so much ♥

[@user-gc7gf9ql5p]

Interestingly, the funny ways actually shows two features of word stressing, LENGTH and PITCH.

[@dipo4599]

Interesting video

[@pbkreddy07]

very useful

[@Worship4Nirwana]

I enjoyed so much

[@deejayee6385]

Just came across your video, some great tips thank you. I can see you've done a video on intonation, but what about a more detailed one on SENTENCE STRESS? I have a private French student who really struggles with sounding 'natural'.

[@bbclearningenglish]

It's a nice idea - we'll look into it. In the meanwhile, here's a short lesson on sentence stress: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/flatmates/episode61/languagepoint.shtml

[@iammrt1691]

I really want the video about this topic more because I try to pronouce the word in british accents and still be confused about the word stress. Sorry for my mistakes. I am not good in english enough!

[@lewisalvarez8310]

Nice guys!🎉

[@ferobserver9768]

Sam always can catch a lot of attentions from audiences …..of course, Den is also a guy who can let us know what a smart British man’a look like.

[@anannyamondal3704]

Very useful but could you please teach the different kinds of stresses like primary, secondary and tertiary stresses?

[@plerpplerp5599]

I laughed so much I think I wet my knickers!😂

[@anmolkaurchahal8865]

I like boths teaching way😀

[@markgleencidro9919]

Good day! I am interested to include this video in the Teacher's Guide in English that I am making here in the Philippines so other English teachers would be aware that links and videos like this exist. This would really help them teach word stress In this connection, may I ask for your permission to mention the link and the title of this video in the said guide? Thank you so much! More power to BBC Learning English! Sincerely, Mark Cidro

[@bbclearningenglish]

Hi Mark, We’re really glad you like our videos! Yes, please mention us to your students! You can also use our videos, audios and texts in your classroom and you can base your lessons on the material from our site. However, you cannot use our materials on your website or for your app. They are for BBC publication only. You can link to us on your website or publicise our URL (and we’d love it if you did…!) but please do not describe us as "partners" or imply that we are officially linked to you. Please read the BBC's terms for using the materials available on this site. www.bbc.co.uk/terms/

[@user-sm1sz9kc9x]

Very good ideas. You could also - once they have heard right ways of pronouncing some words - illustrate the importance of correct word stress by deliberately placing stress over the wrong part of a word, like dinNER, e.g. Then compare this absurd sounding word with it spoken correctly - the more ridiculous the mistaken stress is, the better!

[@poems741]

Awesome 👍

[@englishliterature7231]

I want this shirt .

[@nisarahmasari3240]

is there application of BBC learn English ?

[@lisekirsha5259]

Yes, I just downloaded it from Google play

[@parallelfiles5590]

Hello Dan and Sian! I love yours videos 😀 It's funny! And very interesting. By the way 😉 I would like a t-shirt (laughing) I'm a student. Have a great day!

[@nangsam6536]

very good video

[@shohrehsohaei6316]

Perfect 😎😄😄

[@dasharyzhko9062]

Super!

[@ilyd1348]

very good

[@user-br1hv9fh8u]

💗

[@mariamkinen8036]

Mimicking n reading out loud. A lot. Thanks

[@mohdquamruddin9753]

Lol!! I need that dictionary

[@katherinecodling7261]

Really loved the different methods for teaching this, but shouldn't it be entitled "syllable" stress? I would indeed love to find another video with "word" stress in a sentence.

[@bbclearningenglish]

Thank you for your question!

[@bbclearningenglish]

We use word stress rather than syllable stress because words can contain more than one syllable, and we are teaching how to stress the syllables in the word rather than individual syllables.

[@laurahernando5389]

Well, that would be sentence stress, I believe!

[@rosagapi]

😍

[@ThaoLe-yo3iy]

i wanna that gift

[@hongmao7527]

I want that.😂

[@BalwinderSingh-ec4js]

I want that t-shirt shirts

[@englishlanguagehome8453]

dear sian how beautiful you are. you are awesome

[@konstantsinmazanik9649]

oh, something new

[@user-rb4cq1eo7l]

subtitles would be highly appreciated. If people can understood authors then they already able to understand main theme of yours dialog :)

[@receivedSE]

in indoNEsia, WORD-stress and SENtence-stress AREN'T TAUGHT to STUdents at SCHOOLS and uniVERsity LEvel. HERE, we DON'T KNOW that ENGlish is a STRESS-timed LANguage. we TREAT ENGlish as if it were a SYLlable-timed LANguage like our NAtive TONGUE, indoNEsian. in SCHOOLS, we FOcus on LEARning SIlent READing ONly.

[@annabella2748]

That is ridiculous guys😂😂😂😂

[@Sk-fn6uc]

Can I still get a t shirt 😅