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Words like record, present, and object are spelled the same whether they're a noun or a verb, but the stress moves to signal which one you mean: REC-ord the noun, re-CORD the verb. Some questions play a short sentence so you hear the word in its real role; others ask you to work it out from the grammar. Levels build from the most common pairs to words whose meaning changes with the stress (minute: MIN-it vs my-NOOT), words that never shift, and -ate words like estimate, where the ending changes instead.
Hear how the stress moves when a word switches between noun and verb.
What you'll practice
- Tell noun and verb apart by their stress
- Know which words shift and which never do
- Stop mixing up words like record, present, and object
Frequently asked questions
- What is a stress-shift pair?
- Two words that share a spelling but change part of speech, and pronunciation, depending on where the stress falls: REC-ord (noun) vs re-CORD (verb), PRES-ent vs pre-SENT, and dozens more.
- Why does this matter for speaking?
- Put the stress on the wrong syllable and a fluent word can become genuinely hard to understand, since English listeners rely on stress placement to tell these pairs apart just as much as context does.
- How do the levels unlock?
- Score at least 6 out of 10 on a level to unlock the next one. Every question has a 30-second timer and instant feedback.