What is prosody?
Defined by language experts as "the patterns of stress and intonation in a language", prosody is the "melody" of speech. It is the way we pronounce groups of words and sentences together, rather than individual sounds (called phonemes). Prosody is responsible for the flow and rhythm of our speech: its speed, volume, emotional variation, and where (and how often) we pause.

Why is natural prosody important? 
According to second-language acquisition research, unnatural rhythm, stress, and intonation are more responsible for communication breakdowns than mispronunciations of individual sounds. For example, the words beat and bit are often confused by learners of English, but whichever the learner wanted to use can usually be inferred from the context. However, the word alarm, if said with the stress on its first syllable (AH-larm), will surely sound completely unrecognizable to anyone.

Even when meaning and intention can be guessed, unnatural prosody results in a heavily-accented speech that, in the long run, interlocutors can find tiresome to listen to and difficult to follow. 

By improving their prosody,  learners of English will find themselves sounding more comprehensible, eloquent, and confident to native speakers and other learners alike!

💡Learn next: Syllable Stress, or the first step towards natural prosody.