Rachel's English Intro to Word Stress
Rachel's English Intro to Word Stress explains what makes a syllable stressed in American English and how pitch and length mark it. Published by Rachel's English, an American pronunciation channel and school founded by Rachel Smith, the lesson pairs a video with its full transcript and works through examples from two-syllable words to longer words carrying a secondary stress.
Limits of the Free Tier Plan: The video and its full transcript are on an open page, free to watch and to read with no account, as are the other free videos and the sounds cheat sheet offered in exchange for an email address. The Academy, the school's membership with courses and feedback, is the paid part.
How It Helps Your Business English
The lesson begins with the word about and asks which of its two syllables carries the stress, then names what marks it: higher pitch and greater length. Longer words follow, where a primary stress sits beside a secondary one, as in embarrassment. The full transcript runs under the video, with the example words written syllable by syllable.
You can hear the same word repeated with and without the stress, which makes pitch and length audible rather than theoretical. The passage on primary and secondary stress gives you a way to handle long words, where putting everything on one syllable is what makes a term hard to follow. Reading the transcript while the video plays lets you pause on a word and repeat it until the beats sit where they should.
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