How do I lay stress on affirmative responses?

Hello everyone,

I just want to know how I can emphasize affirmative answers. For instance, when a teacher asks, “Who did the homework?” and then most of the students say, “I didn’t”…So the teacher re-state the question by saying this: "So, people who do did the homework, raise your hand please…"it was taken from real life it happened in one of my pedagogy classes. My concern is that I got confused when my teacher said that because I’ve heard such a things like this: “I love you” and then someone says, “I do know it” or “It seems you cook well”
and he/she says, “Oh! yeah I do cook well”…

Here is my question: "When should I emphasize affirmative statements with do and does? Because as far as I know you can do it in present tense like in the examples above. Nevertheless, I am not the bible and I would like to know how to do it in other tenses…I hope it is clear…

Thanks for your help…

Hi Sergio

It’s not much of a problem to add emphasis to affirmative sentences in any tense in spoken English.

First of all, you’ll usually hear the emphasis in the voice. Secondly, you can add do or did to the simple present or simple past tense (as you mentioned). And for other tenses/constructions you can simply eliminate contractions. Examples (words in boldface type are stressed):

I do do it!
He does do it!
I did do it!
He is doing it!
I have done it!
We will do it!
I am going to do it!
You do have to do it!
I would have done it, but…
etc.

Use do and does for emphasis when using the simple present tense or where do or does would be used to form the negative and questions (such as “have to”.)

If you want to add emphasis to affirmative sentences in written English, and the sentences are not simple present/past, then you have to resort to other methods.

Amy