Abstrakt
Raising students' awareness about the unique character and multifarious functions of the neutral vowel schwa in the English sound system lies at the core of schwa-centred approach, which looks at selected pronunciation aspects, specifically the English vocalic inventory, lexical stress and rhythmic structure from the schwa perspective. The reduced vowel schwa, in layman's terms also referred to as ""important nothing"", becomes powerful as it interacts with other pronunciation features.
The main aim of this paper is to draw attention to the relational nature of the target sound, which may help students coming from schwa-less linguistic backgrounds better understand how prominence patterns in English work and become more confident users of it.