It’s common knowledge that we should pause when speaking. However, if you listen closely to any conversation, you’ll notice that people don’t make clear pauses. How do they still understand each other?

Nuclear Stress in Conversation

The key lies in something called “nuclear stress.” According to international communication experts, nuclear stress mistakes are a common cause of miscommunication. For example, here's a conversation, in which a student asks her classmates for a blue pen.

The student meant to say “Do you have a blue one?” but she mispronounced “one” as “vun.” As you can see, however, that wasn’t the main problem here. The problem was that she stressed the wrong word, and when she stressed the right one (“blue”), her classmates understood her just fine.

But how is nuclear stress different from sentence stress or word stress? As we covered in Part II of this series, pauses divide a sentence into chunks. For example, the sentence, “Eggs are a good source of protein” can have two or three chunks, depending on when we pause:

eggs / are a good source / of protein
eggs / are a good source of protein

Each chunk has a keyword that is more important than the other words. For example, in the chunk “are a good source,” the keyword is “source,” and in the chunk “of protein,” the keyword is “protein.” When speaking, we stress these keywords (or their main syllable):

EGGS / are a good SOURCE / of PROtein

The stressed word or syllable in each chunk is said to carry “nuclear stress,” because it is the “nucleus” (center) of the chunk.

So how do we teach nuclear stress?

Teaching Nuclear Stress in Conversation

We can of course teach nuclear stress when reading articles together. However, it’s even more valuable to teach nuclear stress in conversation. Most of the times, students do not know how improper nuclear stress interferes with their pronunciation!

So the important thing is to let students know how they sound. For example, if you’re teaching a French student who speaks too quickly and without pauses, you can try something like this:

Showing your student what they sound like will be much more effective than simply telling them, “Pause and stress keywords when you speak!” (Plus, your student will probably get a good laugh!)

Then, show them how to apply proper stress. You can do this by capitalizing the stressed words:

(If your student needs extra help with stress, capitalize only the stressed syllables: “HEL-lo. …. I’m learning ENGlish to work in ENGland.)

However, don’t expect to catch every stress mistake in conversation. Just remember that they happen, and next time you miss something your student says, consider asking them to repeat what they said more slowly, listening specifically for pausing and nuclear stress.

👋 That’s it for now!

Now that you’ve read this piece, you’ll probably notice nuclear stress mistakes everywhere. If you apply our suggestions when providing feedback to your students, you’ll be sure to impress them!

For more essential pronunciation feedback, check out the previous parts of this series:

Happy tutoring!