Stress on certain parts of a sentence.

Question

In a lot of the French sentences on Kwiziq, the stress sounds like it is on an odd part of the sentence and I can't figure out the pattern. For example, in "Tu te laves les mains?" above, the word laves is stressed in the recording. And the voice doesn't rise at the end like I would expect for a question. Is that how the question would really be spoken in French? Is there a section here that explains which parts of a sentence are normally stressed?

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Hi Melisa,
French is a syllable-timed language, where syllables take roughly the same amount of time to pronounce. 
In the sentence you mention your voice would rise at the end to indicate it is not a statement but a question.
Hope this helps!