Name- Yin Thu Thu Thwin Aung

Discuss the impact of learning considering and using stress on our daily speech. Elaborate
with your with owe examples.

Stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to a syllable in a word or a word in a phrase/
sentence. Generally, stressed syllables or words are louder than the other, having higher pitch.
Unlike other languages, English has variable stress. There are some significant impact of stress on
our daily speech.

Firstly, the stress can help us identify the meaning of the word even if we don’t understand each and
every utterance of the speaker. In other words, awareness of word stress is the key to understanding.
For native English language speakers, they don’t normally pronounce each and every word clearly
to be understood. Stress helps us contextualize which form of the particular word we are hearing.
Though the word shares a common root, the word stress can be different. For example, present
/ˈprez.ənt/ is generally known as “the noun which is something we give to someone”. However,
when the stress is changed as in present /prɪˈzent/, the meaning turns to change to the verb which
means that “to bring or introduce something to the public. If we are talking to someone, present as
the main message, on telephone over a very bad line, the message is likely to be unclear. In this
case, if we hear only the first syllable of the word, we can know immediately that it is the noun
form of present. Thus, awareness of the stress helps us improve the grasp of English language.

If we wrongly stressed the word, the message we want to transfer would likely to be deviated or it
might not be clear for the listener. For example, if the speaker wrongly stress the syllable of the
word desert (noun and verb forms), the utterance with these words might be difficult to be
understood as in “They will desert /ˈdez.ət/ the desert /dɪˈzɜːt/ by tomorrow.”

We can get to understand the intention of the speaker by the help of sentence stress. Even if the
speaker says the same utterance, the stress may change based on the intention of the speaker. For
instance, if the speaker says the following sentence “I don't think he should get that job.”, placing
stress on “think”, it means that the speaker is not sure whether he will get the job or not. However,
if the speaker places the stress on “that”, it means that the speakers wants him to get another job.
Thus, we can clearly see that the stress can change the meaning of the utterance and vice versa, the
meaning of the utterance can change the stress as well.

Stress is one of the ways to express our feeling in our speech. According to some researches, if a
person feels nervous, they will say the sentences with mono tone, with no stress at all. But when a
person feels angry, he may tend to stress the content words more and it will become louder.

Considering and using stress makes our daily speech to be natural. Native English speaker not only
stress the words on the correct word but also compress the unstressed words. If we have no
knowledge about the stress pattern of the words and if we don’t compress the unstressed words, we
may sound like robots and the precise meaning gets blurred. For example, Japanese speakers often
place a roughly equal stress on each syllable of a sentence. It changes the speed at which we speak
or listen to the language, leading to changes in rhythm of the English language.

Using the correct stress can lead to successful communication. For some non- native speakers, they
usually have miscommunication with native speakers. This is the result of incorrect stress patterns
by non-native speakers. For Hangarian speakers, stress is predominantly fixed and primary stress is
assigned to the initial syllable of a word. They usually stress the initial syllable. For example, when
the Hangarian says the word project, the native English speaker will think of it as a noun, though it
is intended to mention as a verb.

Knowing about stress pattern makes us more confident in speaking and reading English texts.
Sometimes, even if the speaker can be understood, mistakes with word stress can make the listener
feel irritated. If such thing happens, the speaker might have to say repeatedly to transfer the
message. As a result, the non- native speakers will be demotivated as their communication is not as
successfully as it was intended to be. Thus, it is important to know the stress pattern to be the
confident second language speaker.

Moreover, we can remember the pronunciation of new words by knowing the stress patterns. Even
if the student doesn’t know how to pronounce the new word like canvas and so on, they will be able
to produce the correct pronunciation if they know the correct stress pattern.

So, according to the reasons which are mentioned above, it is important to learn considering and
using stress in our daily speech as it is the core factor that contributes in being a successful
communication.