American Accent Training Exercise 1-5: Four Main Reasons for Intonation CD 1 Track 12 Depending on the situation, a word may be stressed for any of the following reasons New information Opinion Contrast Can't 1. New Information It sounds like rain Rain is the new information. It's the most important word in that sentence and you could replace everything else with duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh rain will still let you get your point across. v Repeat: Duh-duh-duh rain /It sounds like rain Duh duh duh V Make rain very musical and put it on two notes: ray-ayn Duh-duh-duh ray-ayn/It sounds like ray-ayn 2.。pini。n It sounds like rain, but I don't think it is In this case, intonation makes the meaning the opposite of what the words say: It looks like a diamond, but I think it's a zircon. It smells like Chanel, but at that price, it's a knock-off. It feels like. It tastes like... These examples all give the impression that you mean the opposite of what your senses tell you. V Practice the intonation difference between new information and opinion It sounds like rain. (It's rain. It sounds like rain .(but it's not 3. Contrast He likes rain, but he hates snow, Like and hate are contrasted and are the stronger words in the sentence 4. Cant It can't rain when there 're no cloud Contractions(Shouldn't, wouldn't) and negatives(no, not, never)are important words since they totally negate the meaning of a sentence, but they are not usually stressed Can't is the exception