It’s like theatre; the more we exaggerate, experiment with and explore the way we use our voices, the more proficient we become at using them and the language we choose to express.

Across a wide range of accents, ages and social groups, the basic rhythms and the stress of the native English-speaker’s speech remain incredibly similar or even exactly the same.

Last year, I asked a few friends and family members of different ages, professions and social backgrounds to do little informal experiment. I wanted to see just how similar the rhythms and intonation that English speaker’s use were. I asked each of the volunteers to do a recording of 6 different sentences (statements, questions, rhetorical questions & claims), as though they were communicating these ideas to a group of people in the context of a presentation or a speech.

Listening back to the recordings, I marked the stressed and semi-stressed syllables of the phrases and the rhythm and intonation that each of them had used. Apart from a couple of minimal stylistic changes to two small areas of the phrases, the basic rhythms, melodies and stress remained the same.

In spoken English, the ‘musical’ and rhythmic properties of the language are a key part of oral communication. They allow the listener to recognize and understand without effort much of the meaning of the words and phrases that we use.

By working with the way you use your voice and by incorporating these rhythmic and musical-tonal structures into your English, you can learn to create the sounds that your listener expects and in that way dramatically improve your communication skills. This will help you reach your listener with ease.