Teaching English as a Foreign Language

178 Part III: Teaching Skills Classes

Impotent or important? Placing emphasis on syllables................

In addition to the individual sounds or phonemes that make up a word, you

also need to know how many syllables there are because if there’s more than

one syllable, you need to add stress or emphasis. Incorrect placement of the

stress can at times change the meaning and definitely hinders communica-

tion.

Take the word ‘export’. It’s a two syllable word (ex + port) and can be used as

a verb or a noun. Interestingly when it’s a noun, you stress ex, but when it is a

verb we stress port. Figure 12-1 shows the several ways you can show empha-

sis on the board.

Figure 12-1:

Showing

stressed

syllables.

'export (n) and ex'port (v)

export (n) and export (v)

export (n) and export (v)

✓ The accent mark is the style often used in dictionaries.

✓ You can write the stressed syllable bigger and bolder than the

unstressed one(s).

✓ If you draw a line above the stressed syllable, put it above the vowel, not

a consonant.

Make it a habit to mark the stress on new words and use one of these visual

methods as a means of correction too. It’s also fun to illustrate the stressed

syllable in an audible way while still allowing the students to work it out. For

example, you can show the difference between impotent and important by

singing DAdada and daDAda.

Emphasising words............................................................................

In English, you stress particular words in a sentence more than others, saying

them a little louder and with more force. The stressed words are usually

those that carry more meaning. Examine the following statements.

Where were you at six o’clock?

I was at home. I went to the club at seven o’clock.