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Concourse 2

Word stress

drummer

When you beat a drum, the harder you hit it, the more sound it makes.  Words in English are the same.  Put more energy into part of the word and that is where we stress it.

Every word in English that has more than a single syllable will have one of those syllables more stressed than the others.
For example the word paper has two syllables.
They are pa and per.
We pronounce the first syllable more loudly than the second syllable so we say:
    PAper
not
    paPER
Many English words work in the same way, with the stress on the first syllable.  Unfortunately, not all of them!

If you are not sure you can say how many syllable s a word has, try this test and then come back to the page to work on stress.

This is small exercise in identifying word stress.  You can pause or re-wind the movie as much as you like.