Robotic-Sounding Student? Teach Them Some Rhythm!

Students often think “word stress” is the same as emphasis, force, or volume. However, when we stress a syllable, we don’t just make it louder. 

We also make it longer and actually shorten the non-stressed syllables around it. This “give and take” or “push and pull” is what creates the rhythm of the English language, and it can be difficult for our students to produce, especially if their mother tongue doesn’t do this.

For example, listen to these recordings of the word, “recording”:

The first “recording” sounds a bit robotic, because there’s no variation in length of each syllable. The second “recording” sounds a lot more natural.

So how can we teach our students to add rhythm to their English?

How to Teach Rhythm

1. Use Audiovisual Cues

First, we’ll want to use some audiovisual cues like text formatting and clapping to help them see and hear word stress. Let’s say your student is reading Nathan’s line in the following dialogue:

To highlight rhythm, you could reformat Nathan’s line by putting the stressed words (or syllables) in all-caps and the remaining ones in parentheses. 

This formatting helps students see that the lowercase words in parentheses can be read more quickly and quietly, while the uppercase words can be read more slowly and loudly.

Next, just as we clap to the rhythm of music, it helps to clap (or tap something) to the rhythm of the language.

1. First, show your student how they sound by clapping according to their rhythm. (For many students, this means clapping at even intervals.)
2. Then, say the sentence yourself and clap along.
3. Now, clap the rhythm of the sentence without saying it. You should get an uneven rhythm like this:

Students usually find it eye-opening that English rhythm actually sounds like this in isolation! (If you need help understanding how tapping helps students understand rhythm, watch this video of an English teacher who taps out the rhythms to the words, “Chinese” and “beginning.”)

Now that they can see and hear the rhythm, it will be much easier for your student to try it themselves.

2. Use Backchaining

Now that students have a basic understanding of rhythm, we can have them practice with backchaining. Backchaining is reading out a word, phrase or sentence, starting from the end.

In the case of Nathan’s line, that would be reading “country music” first, then adding on the rest of the sentence chunk by chunk.

Keep in mind that students easily get lost in the “sea” of foreign sounds, so you might want to exaggerate the stressed syllables or tap out the rhythm as you do this. For more information, see our backchaining post.

Applications in Our Lessons

It’s unlikely we’ll have the luxury to dedicate an entire lesson to rhythm. So when’s the best time to bring it up? 

1. Vocabulary Exercises

Vocabulary exercises are always a good time to share some pronunciation tips. The next time you go through vocabulary with your student, exaggerate the rhythm. For example, let’s say these are the words:

Say “de-LEEEETE” “pre-FERRR.” If you notice the student doesn’t catch on to the syllable lengths, tap out the rhythm and if necessary do some backchaining: “FERRR. pre-FERRR.” This will help them understand that length is an important feature of the word.

2. Reading Exercises

Another time you can introduce rhythm is when the student is reading aloud some text, such as a dialogue or a news article, although this is better with shorter sentences.

Keep in mind that lesson titles and news article headlines (e.g. ) are not great for teaching rhythm. This is because they omit a lot of grammatical words, such as “a” or “the.” 

For example, the headline, “Plane Turns Around After Pilot Spills Coffee,” would probably be “A plane turned around after the pilot spilled coffee” in a conversation. 

When the little words are omitted, only the important, stressed words remain, which defeats the purpose of practicing rhythm.

3. Conversations or Discussions

It’s harder to bring up rhythm in the middle of a conversation, but you could bring it up at the end of a lesson by pointing out things they said that could use some rhythm. 

For example, let’s say your student said, “I think it makes sense,” robotically. You could point out that the statement would sound more natural as, “(I) THINK (it makes) SENSE.”

If they’re interested in getting more practice, you could suggest they book another lesson with you using our Conversation materials.

4. Other Suggestions

At the end of the day, students need to be able to hear rhythm to produce it. To this end, you can advise them to listen to English songs and poems (especially limericks), as these most clearly reflect the rhythm of the language, and will quickly attune students to its sound.

And don’t forget students interested in improving their pronunciation can always record themselves and then go over the recordings with you to figure out ways to improve.

👋 That’s it for now!

Many students can tell that they sound unnatural, but don’t know that rhythm is the source of their troubles. So next time a student asks to have their pronunciation corrected, you can teach them a thing or two about rhythm. They’ll be amazed at how easy it is to sound more natural. 

For more information on teaching stress, check out “Are You Correcting These Pronunciation Mistakes? Part III: Nuclear Stress” and “Forget Word Stress Rules (For Now) and Prioritize These Two Principles.” Happy tutoring!