Rules for Intonation and Speaking Naturally

Don't talk like a robot!

Intonation and emotion are very important. Here are some examples of word stress in English:

Rule #1: Put the stress on important words in the sentence.

• I really enjoy science.
• I am going to the movies tonight. (NOT "I am going to the movies tonight."

Rule #2: For questions that can be answered Yes or No, your voice should go up at the end:

• Are you a student?
• Do you like folk music?

Rule #3: For open questions, your voice should go down at the end:

• What do you do?
• What kind of music do you like?

Rule #4: When you are listing many things, your voice goes up for each item except the last one. Your voice goes down on the last item:

• Jana loves to dance, read, write papers, and sing.
• Last night for dinner I ate carrots, steak, and potatoes.

Rule #5: When you see a punctuation mark such as a comma (,) or period (.), you should pause in your speaking and take a breath. This will make you sound more natural:

• Good: English, in my opinion, is an easy language to learn. Students need to study hard.
• Bad: English in my opinion is an easy language to learn students need to study hard.

Rule #6: When a sentence uses a noun, the stress goes on the noun. When the sentences uses a pronoun instead of a noun, the stress goes on the verb:

• Jana teaches English.
• Jana teaches it.

Rule #7: If you want to change the meaning of the sentence, change the word stress. See the examples below:

• I didn't cheat on the test. (Laura did!)
• I didn't cheat on the test. (It never happened.)
• I didn't cheat on the test. (I cheated on the homework.)

Here is a site that will help you understand word stress and sentence intonation.


You can skip the beginning and go straight to the part that shows you how to speak naturally using correct intonation. The words in bold are the words that you should stress (or say louder).