Sentence stress

Listen to the minimal pair sentences again and match each pair with one of the stress patterns (a—f) below. The big circles are the strongly stressed words in the sentence and the small circles are the weakly stressed words (or syllables).

EXAMPLE           a) ooOO    (Pair 1) It's the long road. / It’s the wrong road.
a) ooOO       b) OoO        c) ooO            d) ooOO           e) oOoOo        f) oooOo

Notice that the weakly stressed words are said more quickly, and this changes the pronunciation, e.g. to and do are pronounced /tə/ and /də/.

1.   2.   3.
4.   5.   6.

Pair 1:    It’s the long road./It’s the wrong road.

Pair 2:    Is it light?/Is it right?

Pair 3:    It’s a long load./It’s a long road.

Pair 4:    Do you like jelly?/Do you like Jerry?

Pair 5:    I’d like to fly it. / I’d like to fry it.

Pair 6:    There’s some glass./There's some grass.