A Study on Nuclear Stress in Elementary English Textbooks in Korea

Abstract

This study considered how nuclear stress is addressed in elementary English textbooks. For this, elementary English textbooks were surveyed to identify activities for nuclear stress, and teacher’s guides to see if they offered adequate linguistic and pedagogical tips for nuclear stress. Nuclear stress identified in the textbooks was analyzed in terms of informational focus in English. The findings were: 1) In two textbooks, nuclear stress was addressed concerning question/sentence reading and presented with key expressions mostly in question-answer pairs; 2) Questions mainly consisted of wh-questions with a broad focus, while answers with a broad focus outnumbered those with a narrow focus; 3) Nuclear stress in questions and answers with a broad focus was placed on the last content words excluding a few marked or erroneous cases; 4) All the erroneous nuclear stress placements in the two textbooks were those with a broad focus; 5) The teacher’s guides of one series of textbooks alone provided linguistic and pedagogical tips for nuclear stress, however the tips were often inaccurate and insufficient.