Identifying the stressed syllable can be as simple as saying the word and listening for which part sounded loudest or had the clearest vowel sound. Strategies for Identifying Accented Syllables Think of the sound at the end of “banana,” the beginning of “about,” or the middle of “Japan.” Schwa /ə/ is the sound an unaccented vowel can make that sounds like short u or “uh”. An accented syllable will fully pronounce the vowel sound, while unaccented syllables have less emphasized vowels and possibly even the schwa sound.

A key point is that accent has to do with how the vowel sounds. Basically, this means that we say it louder than the other syllables. Delving deeply into accents could be the focus of a college linguistics course, so here I will just introduce some basic information, strategies and rules.Īccent is also known as stress in English we stress one syllable more than the others when we pronounce a word. In fact, Phonics First only addresses stressed and unstressed syllables when discussing the schwa syllable type. Identifying accented syllables is a finer point of language, so it should be addressed only after students have mastered phonics.

I read a comment from someone earlier this week asking for help on accented syllables and I thought that would be a great topic for today’s post. Thanks so much for getting involved in the blog and posting your questions! You can now subscribe to get blog posts delivered right to your inbox by filling in your email address in the box on the right.

The study of word stress and accent