When children start learning nursery rhymes, they tend to stress most if not all the full vowels. As they become familiar with the texts and can say them more quickly, their stress pattern becomes more adult-like, with a greater number of the full vowels not being stressed.
We now suggest that you practise saying the nursery rhyme in the download sheet below. If you are a non-native speaker, you might like to underline the stressed words on page 1, and check your choices against the stress patterns shown on page 2. As you will see, the stress pattern is influenced by the speed of the speech. If said fast, one of the syllables in each line loses its stress, and then contains a full but unstressed vowel.
As before, go through some practice cycles with these texts.
Alternate between your ordinary voice, whisper and a loud whisper. Be aware of what you are doing with your abdominal muscles, and try to keep the same actions that you use for stage whisper when you return to normal voice.
So far this week, we've described the physical actions which create stress and we've shown how whisper and stage whisper help learners to become more aware of how they use themselves, by making the movements involved more exaggerated and therefore easier to feel and control. You've practised this for yourself.
What is your response to this way of teaching stress? Please comment below.
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