Beat it!

No, I'm not going to talk about the Michael Jackson song. Beat it in the sense of rhythm.... But what has this to do with learning English?

Did you know that English is a stress-timed language?

What this means is that the rhythm that we hear in English speech depends not on the number of words in a sentence, but the number of stressed syllables in those words.

Each word in English with more than one syllable has a stressed syllable. The stressed syllables are held longer and spoken slightly louder. 

We can show this by using the following simple system:

Ja-PAN     MAN-age-ment      SIM-ple        MU-sic      com-PU-ter     HO-li-day

Try it out.

How can this information help me?

Most students do not understand the concept of word stress until it is pointed out to them. In some languages, like French, words often have the same spelling, but the word stress in a different place but in English it is always in the same place. 

When you learn a new word, ALWAYS mark the stress. This means when you review the word, you will also remember how to pronounce it.