Teacher Discussion Forums

Are there rules governing what words are emphasized or where changes in intonation occur when one is reading something out loud?

I had this question from one of my advanced students, but wasn't quite sure. They want to be able to read in a more natural sounding way. Any ideas on how these rules, should they exist, can be taught?

Thanks.

I was taught to teach students to reduce the function words (articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxilliaries etc) and stress the content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs). The last word of a sentence takes the main sentence stress, unless it is an adverb of time (yesterday, tomorrow: I went to the store yesterday) OR a noun that is modified by an adjective (I went to see the Picasso exhibit yesterday), in which case the adjective takes the stress. Of course, this is all in general and cannot be counted on as a hard-and-fast rule...I also teach how the meaning of the sentence can change depending on the stress (Do you want pizza for dinner? Do you want pizza for dinner? Do you want pizza for dinner?). There are exercises online that practice stress and intonation; just google "stress" and "intonation" and "esl".

The famous example is:

"Did I buy my wife flowers on her birthday?"

Where there are nine different ways of stressing for meaning, one for each word.

"Díd I buy my wife flowers for her birthday?" ( I don't remember)

"Did Í buy my wife flowers for her birthday?" (Somebody did. Me?)

etcetera

"Did I buy my wife flowers fór her birthday?"

What would that mean?

It's better with "on". Whý did I put "for" the second and third time?"