Word Stress Charts

Purpose: Improves pronunciation and provides practice identifying word stress patterns in new vocabulary, and helps learners to focus on the most critical words in a message.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Materials Needed: Copies of the Word Stress Chart for each learner, reading text.

Procedure:

1. Ask the learners read through their text and identify the ten words that they think are the most critical to the meaning of the text. Learners may go through the text as a group, go through the text and select words individually, then discuss their choices in the small group to come to a consensus, or go through the text individually and each select their own words.
2. Have the learners write their words down in the Word columns of the Word Stress Charts.
3. Read the text out loud. Have the learners listen for the stress patterns in the words that they identified, and draw circles to represent the word stress pattern in the Stress Pattern columns for each word, one circle for each syllable. The circles for the unstressed syllables will be small, and the circle for the stressed syllable will be large. You may need to repeat this step several times.
4. Have the learners read their lists of words aloud. Check for the correct word stress patterns.
5. Give the learners a few minutes to practice the pronunciation of their selected words individually or with a partner.
6. Have learners read the text out loud. Check that they are using the correct word stress patterns on the selected words from their chart.

Word                              Stress Pattern

pharmacy                  O o o

ambulance                O o o

clinic                           O o

dangerous                 O o o

ingest                          o O

infants                         O o

emergency                 o O o o

toxic                             O o

poison                         O o

mistake                       o O

Expansion 1: Have learners write ten words from the weekly unit on the Word Stress Chart. After working together to fill in the stress patterns on the chart, let the learners practice saying the words. Give the learners a few minutes to think of a story that uses as many words from the chart as possible. Have the learners take turns telling their stories aloud, focusing on using the correct word stress from the words on the chart.

Expansion 2: Ask the learners to tell you a story. At the end of the story, work together to identify the most important words, and fill in the Word Stress Chart. Let the learners practice the words, then have them retell the story, focusing on using the correct word stress from the selected words on their chart.