English Word Stress Production by Iraqi Arabic ESL Learners: Reliance on the Impact of Stress Position

Abstract

The existing study approves the results and findings of the previous studies Iraqi Arabic ESL learners show their production difficulties and problems in stress assignment and how they are impacted by their L1 stress patterns. The number of syllables and correct stress position on English lexical items has a great influence, as they show more emphasis and tendency when stressing the first syllable in a given word. The researcher has a main goal in investigating which stress position is considered more problematic and which one is easier in predicting stress placement in polysyllabic words of two and three syllables. To achieve this aim, one experiment is carried out: a production test to measure the number of errors and accuracy scores of Iraqi Arabic L2 learners. The production results reveal that Iraqi Arabic ESL learners commit more errors when stress is assigned on the second and third syllables than on the first syllable. This suggests that there is a strong connection between the previous word stress models predictions about predictable stress languages and their poor performance in the assignment of stress on lexical word based on their stress position. The study has arrived at the following conclusions: L1 transfer is considered as an important factor that affects the performance of L2 speech production and the stress assignment is also problematic and the increase in the number of syllables and stress position in the lexical words affect ESL learners' performance.