English Language · Lesson 16

Rhymes, homophones & emphatic stress/intonation

JAMBWAECNECO

What the syllabus asks

JAMB: oral forms (rhymes, vowel and consonant contrasts, stress patterns, emphatic stress)

WAEC: rhymes, homophones, word stress, emphatic (contrastive) stress, intonation

NECO: rhymes, homophones, word stress, emphatic (contrastive) stress, intonation

What you will learn

Explain why spelling is an unreliable guide to sound in English.
Identify words that rhyme, including those with misleading spellings.
Recognise and use common homophones correctly in context.
Divide words into syllables and identify the stressed syllable.
Apply the main word-stress rules for suffixes, noun–verb pairs and compounds.
Choose the correct question answered by a sentence with emphatic stress.
Identify falling and rising intonation patterns and their meanings.

Key points

Oral questions test sound, not spelling; answer by RP (standard British).
Words rhyme when the last stressed vowel and the sounds after it match: said/bed, come/sum, tomb/room.
Look-alike traps: comb/tomb/bomb, food/good/blood, move/love/stove, warm/worm.
Homophones sound identical but differ in spelling and meaning: principal/principle, stationary/stationery.
RP is non-rhotic, so court = caught, horse = hoarse, morning = mourning.
Homographs share spelling only: lead /liːd/ and lead /led/.
Stress falls before -tion, -ic, -ity, -ial; two before the end with -logy/-graphy; on -ee, -eer, -ese, -ique.
Noun first, verb second: REcord / reCORD; compounds stress the first part: CLASSroom.
Emphatic stress corrects one word; the right question changes only that word.
Falling tune: statements, commands, wh-questions, sure tags; rising: yes/no questions, unfinished items, unsure tags.

Start here: What the oral English questions test

In the WAEC and NECO English Language Paper 1, and in the JAMB Use of English paper, there is a section often called Test of Orals or oral forms. Many candidates treat it as luck. It is not. It tests one skill: can you hear English words in your head correctly, without being fooled by spelling?

English spelling is old. Many words are still spelt the way they were pronounced hundreds of years ago, while the pronunciation has moved on. That is why "knight" has a silent k and gh, and why "though", "through", "tough", "cough" and "bough" all end in -ough yet have five different sounds.

Word	Sounds like…	Vowel
though	go	/əʊ/
through	true	/uː/
tough	cuff	/ʌ/
cough	off	/ɒ/
bough (branch)	cow	/aʊ/

The question types you will meet are:

Rhymes: "Choose the word that rhymes with said."
Homophones: "Choose the word that sounds the same as sole."
Stress: "Choose the word with the stress on the second syllable", or "the word with a different stress pattern".
Emphatic stress: a sentence with one word in capitals, and you choose the question it answers.
Intonation (mostly WAEC Paper 3 and school tests): which tune a sentence takes.

The model accent is RP (Received Pronunciation), the standard British accent used in good dictionaries. Some Nigerian pronunciations differ from RP; in the exam you must answer by RP.

💡 Exam tip: say every option quietly in your head, slowly, and listen to it. Never choose by looking at the letters.

Try it yourself. Which of these does NOT contain the same vowel as "cow": bough, plough, though?

Show solution

though, which has /əʊ/ as in "go". "Bough" and "plough" both have /aʊ/.

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Practice questions

1. Choose the word that rhymes with "said".

bed
paid
sad
seed

Show answer

A: bed
"Said" is /sed/ → rhymes with bed.

2. Choose the word that rhymes with "rough".

through
though
cough
stuff

Show answer

D: stuff
Rough /rʌf/ rhymes with stuff. "Cough" is /kɒf/.

3. Choose the word that rhymes with "bear".

beer
her
fair
fear

Show answer

C: fair
Both end in /eə/.

4. Choose the word that rhymes with "cough".

dough
off
enough
through

Show answer

B: off
Both end in /ɒf/.

5. Choose the word that rhymes with "blood".

mud
food
good
mood

Show answer

A: mud
Both end in /ʌd/.

Key words

Rhyme: Agreement in the final stressed vowel and the sounds after it, e.g. "cake" and "break".
Homophone: A word that sounds the same as another but has a different spelling and meaning, e.g. "flour" and "flower".
Homograph: A word spelt like another but different in meaning, and sometimes in sound, e.g. "lead" (to guide) and "lead" (a metal).
Syllable: A unit of sound built round one vowel sound, e.g. "ba-na-na" has three.
Word stress: The extra force, length and pitch given to one syllable of a word.
Primary stress: The strongest stress in a word, marked ˈ before the syllable in dictionaries.
Emphatic (contrastive) stress: Extra stress on one word in a sentence to contrast it with something else.
Intonation: The rise and fall of the pitch of the voice across a sentence.
Falling tune (Tune 1): A pitch that drops at the end, used for statements, commands and wh-questions.
Rising tune (Tune 2): A pitch that goes up at the end, used for yes/no questions and incomplete utterances.
Nucleus (tonic syllable): The syllable in a tone group where the main pitch movement happens.
Question tag: A short question added to a statement, e.g. "…, isn't it?"

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