Today’s tip will help you improve your intelligibility score. Several elements influence intelligibility — and pronunciation is obviously one of them. But stress is just as important as pronunciation.
For example, you probably know that DESert (stress on the first syllable) means a vast, sandy area. But when the stress moves to the second syllable — deSERT — it refers to the sweet food you eat after a meal. Just one change in stress completely changes the meaning.
Stress is especially important because English is a stress-timed language. Native speakers rely on stressed syllables to understand meaning quickly. AI scoring systems are also trained to recognize these speech patterns. If you place stress incorrectly, you may lose points in intelligibility.
Many non-native speakers think stress only applies to single words. However, some words are made up of two words combined into one meaning unit. These are called compound words.
Let’s look at a few examples you might already know:
the WHITE House — where the president lives
a GREENhouse — where plants grow
ICE cream
If you don’t stress compound words correctly, listeners may misunderstand your meaning. For example, compare:
the WHITE House (the president’s residence)
a white HOUSE (a house painted white)
Or:
a GREENhouse (a building for plants)
a green HOUSE (a house that is green in color)
See how stress changes the meaning?
Stressing compound words correctly helps you earn a higher intelligibility score and makes you sound more natural because your speech becomes more rhythmic.
Another important benefit is memory. When you treat compound words as one unit, your brain processes them as a single idea instead of two separate words. This makes sentences easier to remember — which is especially helpful for the TOEFL Listen and Repeat task. In fact, many sentences in that task contain compound words.
For example, let’s look at this ETS sample resource:
- Here is how to start and adjust the treadmill.
- There are many benches in the weightlifting area.
- We do encourage the use of yoga mats for stretching out.
- The rowing machine is excellent for a full-body workout.
- We have plenty of exercise bikes for cardio training.
- Please use the wipes provided at each station for cleaning equipment after use.
- If you want to see great results quickly, consider joining our daily fitness classes.
……..
Now here’s where it gets interesting.
Some expressions look like compound words,
but they’re actually just noun phrases — normal phrases that describe a noun.
For example:
white house — a house that is white
leather pants — pants made of leather
clean water
So how can you tell the difference when you’re listening?
The secret is stress.
In compound nouns, we stress the first word.
In normal noun phrases, we stress the main noun.
Listen to this:
English teacher
– Stress English → a teacher who teaches English
– Stress teacher → a teacher from England
Same words.
Different stress.
Different meaning.
Now try these two:
running shoes
Here, “running” doesn’t describe the shoes.
They’re shoes for running, so the stress goes on running.
But running water?
Now “running” really describes the water,
so the stress goes on water.
That one change in stress changes how you understand the phrase.
ow, you might be wondering how to know which word to stress when you’re not sure whether something is a compound noun or just a simple noun phrase. A helpful rule is this: if the first word shows purpose or function, it’s usually a compound noun. If it describes a quality, then it’s a noun phrase.