John McWhorter’s TED Talk from 2016 discussing four reasons to learn a new language is one of my favourites. As well as being interesting and inspirational, it is also an excellent example of how the English language sounds.
Stress-timing, frequency range, dynamics and intonation are all demonstrated to great effect here.
Listen to how McWhorter emphasises the important words and how he moves from one to the next. Listen to how he uses the rise and fall in tone to let you the listener know what’s important. He also uses silence to give some of those words even more emphasis, letting you process the information more easily.
He uses intonation to give to give us audio bullet points. Hanging intonations let us know that he is giving us a list. Descending intonation tells us that list has ended. Listen and try and incorporate some of these elements the next time you use English.