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Essay on Word Stress

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Introduction
Word stress is one of the essential and crucial parts which play a great role in English language learning.

What is word stress and what are its features and why are they important to be identified:
According to Underhill (2005) Word stress is an expression used to describe the accent or a highlight given to a particular part of a word and it is relatively consistent element of a word when spoken in isolation. Stress may occur on the first, middle or on the last syllable in a word. Words of more than one syllable usually consist of stressed and unstressed syllables. In English there is a unique correlation between the different parts of a word. Words with two or more syllables …show more content…

In addition there is a regular physical relation between stress and pitch, in other words the stressed syllable usually has a high in pitch. Moreover stress syllables may uttered more evidently with the facial movements of the speaker and the sound produced is purer. These features are important to be known, because they are interconnected and have enormous affects in controlling the quantity of energy in articulation. According to Underhill(2005, p:53) “these features ,singly or in combination, constitute word stress, and since there is more than one correlate, it follows that when teachers help learners to produce a clearer word stress they can choose whichever feature seems to be easy to control and guide the learners to the target sound of the utterance”
What is unstressed syllable and what should it contain
With the purpose of one syllable to be supposed as stressed, the syllables around it have to to be unstressed .in favour of stress syllables some features were identified. Unstressed may be defined as the absences of these features. Knowledge of the essential contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables may help learners in many

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