English Word Stress Research Articles

Unlocking potential: Integrating pronunciation into business instruction to inspire students and strengthen content teachers

Integrating content and language instruction has gained popularity worldwide because it allows students to improve their content knowledge while concurrently honing their language skills. Although this approach seems beneficial in principle, it can be quite demanding, particularly on the content teachers’ part in practice. This study aims to examine the effect of language instruction integrated into a content class at a university in Thailand. Based on a content teacher’s voluntary participation, a class of business students (N = 52) were exposed to 5-8 minutes of English word stress instruction in eight business lessons spanning over the entire course. A similar 40 business words for the pretest and post-test were administered at the beginning and toward the end of the course. Subsequently, a focus group discussion of six students was conducted to elicit the students’ attitudes toward such integrated instruction. The analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data shows that integrating pronunciation instruction with content instruction can be beneficial. Cognitively, the students’ word stress placement skills have substantially improved, as determined by a high value of the t-test. Psychologically, the students had positive attitudes, greater motivation to learn English, higher engagement in the lessons, and more confidence in speaking English. Overall, the study demonstrates that pronunciation instruction minimally integrated with content instruction could lead to immense pronunciation success. The study has important implications for English language educators who seek to effectively integrate pronunciation instruction into their content instruction programs, benefiting both students and content teachers.

The Effect of English Songs on Chinese Students’ Acquisition of Word Stress in a Rural Junior High School

Few studies have examined how teaching English songs to junior high school students in rural areas affects students’ English pronunciation. To fill this gap, we taught English songs to 39 rural junior high school students and tested their perception and production of English words with different stress patterns before and after the session of learning English songs. Students were asked to identify the position of word stress for a list of disyllabic words, and they were asked to read the disyllabic words with different stress placements. Teachers evaluated the students’ pre-test and post-test performance, and acoustic measures were taken to compare their pronunciation in two sessions. After two weeks, the production test revealed an improvement in the students’ ability to produce English stress. In the post-test, students could more effectively use the duration cue to distinguish between stressed and unstressed syllables. However, students’ perception improvement was not attested. The findings generally indicated that English songs have a beneficial impact on junior high school students in rural areas who are learning English word stress.

The Effects of Metaphonological Awareness Protocol Training on English Word Stress by Chinese EFL Learners

The Effects of Metaphonological Awareness Protocol Training on English Word Stress by Chinese EFL Learners

Influence of first language on English word stress assignment by bahdini Kurdish learners of English

Studies on learning second language (L2) phonology agree that first language (L1) has a key role in the production of learners L2. This study was carried out on Bahdini Kurdish (henceforth, BK) learners of English in order to investigate how phonological characteristics of Kurdish word stress affect the production of English word stress as far as the two languages have different stress placement rules. It was hypothesized that BK learners will face challenges in learning English stress and they will, more frequently, place stress on the final syllable of the English words, similar to their L1. Thirty students from the English Language Department at University of Zakho participated in this study. The participants completed a production test of reading 48 English words with different grammatical categories, stress positions and morphological structures. The learners’ production was recorded and listened to by the researcher and two phonologists to indicate the correct stress placement in their performance. The results show that BK learners were not able to place stress on the correct syllable of all types of words in English: simple, complex and compound. Furthermore, language transfer was not clear in the learners’ performance of the test words, that is, they did not place stress on the final syllable of the words. The learners were unaware of English stress rules and English pronunciation in general and did not properly acquire them. Mispronunciation of words and parts of the words and lack of knowledge about English stress rules, therefore, were clearly the factor of stress misplacement in all types of words.

Exploring the Impact of Age and Proficiency: English Word Stress Placement in Indonesian EFL Learners

The use of stress is perceived as the most influence factor in communication. The reason is not merely aware on the stress rule in a language but more on how to avoid the conflict of misunderstanding among the speakers. When every language has different rule on stress placement such as Indonesian language and English, this researh is inspired to conduct the investigation on the awareness and the use of English stress on Indonesian students in Cirebon, Indonesia. There are 14 selected English words which is loan in Indonesian vocabularies. It will help to know whether the participants can differentiate both tones and stress in the test. The result of this study shows the age and English competence of Indonesian students influences the accuracy of English word stress placement. The implication of this research is to build an awareness on English teaching learning on young learners.

An Analysis of Pronunciation in Word Stress Towards Students of Sixth Semester of English Education at UIN Raden Intan Lampung

Stress placement in English words is conduct with complicated rules. Hence, assigning stress correctly in English words is still a challenge for learners. This research explored the production of English word stress by 23 students of the sixth semester at Islam State University Raden Intan Bandar Lampung. This research used a qualitative approach, and the data were recorded by giving a task to pronounce 15 words. PRAAT software was utilized to analyze the recordings, including measuring the pitch, intensity, and duration as indicators. The result illustrated that the students word stress pronunciation was avarage. Almost all the students were able to distinguish the placement of stress correctly, with a percentage of 82% on two syllables, 51% on three syllables, and 67% on four syllables. Mother tongue influence, local accent and lack of exposure in utilized word stress also contribute the problem

Misplacement of stress by Sophomore and Junior Jordanian Students Case Study: The University of Jordan/ Aqaba

Stress is considered one of the most essential speech tools used by English speakers to communicate meaning. Some English speakers, especially non-native speakers of English encounter difficulties in assigning stress accurately. Therefore, this study purports to explore the effect of native language (L1) stress properties on the second language, i.e., EFL, which is the study of English by persons who reside in regions where it is not the primary language of communication. To gather the data of the study a descriptive qualitative method is used. The study's population is the second and third-year English department students for the academic year 2022_2023.The sample of the study included 30 male and female students. The researchers designed an oral test to collect the data of the study through asking the student to pronounce words to observe where the students place stress on the words. The findings showed that there were statistically significant disparities among the students in placing stress on words, due to their gender, and their level of university study experience. One of the most important findings that the students transfer the stress rules from their mother tongue language. This study also showed that it is possible to predict Arabic word stress placement from the word's syllabic structure. Additionally, the findings showed Jordanian students have difficulty placing word stress on the right syllable. The misplacement in assigning stress to the correct place in words is attributed to the influence of the mother tongue and students' lack of awareness of the importance of stress in the English language. This study is distinguished study because it developed a model in the importance of assigning stress in English words. The findings of this study suggest that further studies in the reasons of misplacement of stress could be conducted to clarify the main reasons for misplacement of stress among non-native speakers of English.

How to Perform English Word Stress on English Pronunciation

Word stress is a suprasegmental feature in English pronunciation. The word stress supports the correct articulation of English pronunciation. This qualitative research revealed the position of stress in English words. This research captured the pattern of English word stress. There are several phonologists discussing the word stress such as Chomsky, Hale, and Giegerich. The data taken was from the Oxford English Dictionary and from the English native spoken by observing, reading, listening, and noting. The way to analyze the data applied the textual analysis. The result of this research is the pattern of the English word stress articulation. From this research, it is known that the number of syllables determines the position of the stress. The ultimate stress occurs in two-syllable words. The penultimate and antepenultimate syllables occur in the words which have more than two syllables. The stress in the first syllable occurs in one-syllable, two-syllable, three-syllable, and four-syllable words. Stress does not fall on the affixes. However, the stress falls on the preposition for phrasal verbs. There is variation of stress position on the compound nouns and noun phrases due to their formation. Knowing stress’ position while pronouncing English helps distinguish the meaning literally.

ERP evidence for Slavic and German word stress cue sensitivity in English.

Word stress is demanding for non-native learners of English, partly because speakers from different backgrounds weight perceptual cues to stress like pitch, intensity, and duration differently. Slavic learners of English and particularly those with a fixed stress language background like Czech and Polish have been shown to be less sensitive to stress in their native and non-native languages. In contrast, German English learners are rarely discussed in a word stress context. A comparison of these varieties can reveal differences in the foreign language processing of speakers from two language families. We use electroencephalography (EEG) to explore group differences in word stress cue perception between Slavic and German learners of English. Slavic and German advanced English speakers were examined in passive multi-feature oddball experiments, where they were exposed to the word impact as an unstressed standard and as deviants stressed on the first or second syllable through higher pitch, intensity, or duration. The results revealed a robust Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potential (ERP) in both language groups in response to all conditions, demonstrating sensitivity to stress changes in a non-native language. While both groups showed higher MMN responses to stress changes to the second than the first syllable, this effect was more pronounced for German than for Slavic participants. Such group differences in non-native English word stress perception from the current and previous studies are argued to speak in favor of customizable language technologies and diversified English curricula compensating for non-native perceptual variation.

An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of Word-stress Learnability: Evidence from Moroccan-English Interlanguage

This study adopts a theoretical analysis of the learnability of English word-stress. It intends to provide an Optimality-theoretic analysis of word-stress learnability among Moroccan learners of English. Language acquisition, from an Optimality Theory perspective, is a process of reordering the constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language-specific ranking of the target grammar. To account for stress development, this paper makes use of the Constraint Demotion Algorithm (Tesar & Smolensky, 1996; 2000), which learners adopt to infer the correct hierarchy of constraints. Starting with a default hierarchy supplied by Universal Grammar, learners proceed with the recursive demotion of higher-ranked constraints until the correct ranking is reached. The algorithm, starting by initializing the hierarchy, assumes that constraints are unranked and thus hosted in the same stratum. Sixty Moroccan learners participated in the study. The informants are third-year students at Ibn Tofail University. They were administered an oral multiple-choice test that elicited their intuition about English stress patterns. The overall findings of the study reveal that learners’ prior (L1) ranking influences their learnability of English stress. That is, Moroccan learners misplace stress in English words due to the initial state of their grammar. From the findings, OT is evidenced to successfully predict learning stages using CDA, wherein each demotion signals a learning stage.

The Recognition and Production of English Word Stress of Thai University Students

This study aimed to find out whether English major students who had basic knowledge of Linguistics are able to assign word stress to two-syllable, three-syllable and four-syllable English words correctly, whether there is a significant correlation between their competence in recognizing and in producing English word stress, and to determine the factors affecting word stress recognition and production. The participants were 14 second year English major students who had basic knowledge of Linguistics. The data were collected by using a word stress assignment. The participants were assigned to mark the primary stress on 45 words, and read all of them. The results revealed that over 70% of the stress placements of two-syllable, three-syllable and four-syllable English words were correct. For the stress productions, it was found that over 70% of them were correct. It can be assumed that the ability of the students to assign the primary stress to the two-syllable, three-syllable, and four-syllable words correlated with their ability to pronounce them. From the interview, it was found that the differences between English and Thai, the complexity of the syllables, and the inadequate knowledge of syllable structure might be the factors affecting students’ word stress errors.

Comparative Study of Word Stress in Australian and New Zealand English in the Socio-Historical Context of Formation

Comparative Study of Word Stress in Australian and New Zealand English in the Socio-Historical Context of Formation

The influence of Madurese dialect toward students’ English word stress production

Communication using English in Indonesia is challenging, especially when English is not used frequently. It’s happen to some area where English is only taught as mandatory subject in high schools. Madura is one of island in East Java that has unique characteristic, especially in the native language. This study aimed to analyze the misplaced of English word stress done by Madurese students and to find out the reason why they frequently misplace the word stress. A questionnaire and recording were used to collect data about students’ background identity and to record the students’ voice in pronouncing English words. The data were analysed by using qualitative research design to find out the causes of word stress misplacement. The findings revealved that the influence of mother language, motivation, attitude, and age are the most influential factors that generate students in misplacing the word stress. Besides, the lack of pronunciation training and practice done by teachers in their high school was also generating factors for students in pronouncing incorrect word stresses.

A Conceptual Approach to Teaching L2 Pronunciation: Perception of Word Stress

Research has demonstrated that pronunciation teaching can be effective, but there have been very few classroom-based studies that have focused on the perception aspect of pronunciation. This article explains the theory and practical application of a conceptual approach and reports on its impact on perception of English word stress. The quasi-experimental study (N=18) involved four fifty-minute lessons on stress in two-syllable words in a high-intermediate ESL class. The experimental (n=10) group was tested pre, post (mid-semester) and delayed (end-semester) and the comparison (n=8) group was tested twice before receiving the instruction in the second half of the semester and being tested again. In line with a conceptual approach, the innovative testing method used moves beyond traditional identification tasks in an attempt to measure changes in participants' conceptual understandings. The tests showed large and significant gains in perception, which were retained eight weeks later. The comparison group made no gains, but after instruction improved on a par with the experimental group. This study presents an effective way of teaching pronunciation concepts, supported by theory, that also leads to improvements in perception. It informs and provides a template for both teachers and researchers who may want to replicate the study.

AN ANALYSIS OF WORD STRESS IN THE NEWS READING VIDEOS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS STUDENTS

This study aims to analyze word stress and factors that cause the differences in pronunciation in the news reading videos of students majoring in Public Relations. Using the descriptive method, this study focuses on how students pronounce words stress by comparing the pronunciation with Standard American English (SAE). Through the transcription of the news reading, it is found that there are 30 words containing word stress. Working with 10 selected informants, results reveal that the students can pronounce 16 words with the correct stress. 11 words are pronounced in different syllables and 1 word is pronounced without stress. The rest of the data indicates diverse answers by the informants but still highlights the mispronunciation. The factors that cause difficulties in the pronunciation of word stress in English are the interferences of the mother tongue, the inconsistency of some sounds in English, the differences in phonological rules between English and Indonesian, and lastly, the lack of exposure to English as a medium for communication.Keywords: pronunciation; word stress; syllables.

English Word Stress in Norm-Providing, Norm-Developing and Norm-Dependent Countries

English Word Stress in Norm-Providing, Norm-Developing and Norm-Dependent Countries

Erroneous Word-Stress Patterns Used by EFL Yemeni Learners

This experimental study aims at investigating the English word-stress patterns used by Yemenis, learning English as a foreign language, and the erroneous stress patterns used by them. Accent or stress is a feature of high significance in English speech. At the level of a word, one syllable gets accentuated with primary stress. To achieve the purpose of this study, and to find out to what extent word stress of Received Pronunciation English poses difficulty on Yemeni Arabic speakers using English as a foreign language, 120 subjects of various scientific disciplines, were chosen for data collection. They were recorded and their utterances went through deep analysis based on the auditory impression of the researcher and on the spectrographic evidence resulting from the speech analysis of the software program PRAAT. The most significant findings reached by the researcher were that word-stress in the four-syllable target words were the most problematic for the speakers in which 53.2% of them put the stress, randomly, on the wrong syllables in words. Three-syllable target words appeared to be less problematic as 44.4% of the participants placed the stress inaccurately in words. The least difficulties encountered by the speakers were with the two-syllable target words where 70.6% of the speakers managed to pronounce the words with correct stress placement. It is noteworthy to mention that there was a tendency among the speakers who produced wrong stress patterns, to accent either the first syllable or the one including a long vowel or a diphthong in the words.

A Phonological Study of the Influence of Arabic Stress on the Pronunciation of English Words by Saudi ESL Learners

Stress plays a profound role in languageintelligibility and comprehensibility. However, stress is considered a problematic area by ESL learners. Many studies have examined L2 acquisition of suprasegmmental elements such as pitch, tone and intonation, but few have focused on stress in relation to Arabic language transfer. For example, Guion(2003) has studies the influence of the  factors of syllable structure and word class on stress assignment by ESL learners. Kelley (1992) has studied the influence of language stress properties on the second language acquisition of primary word stress. This paper investigates English word stresspronunciation errors by of Saudi learners of ESL. Itintends to examine the transference of Arabic on the learning of English word stress by Saudi learners of ESL.It explores the relation between language interference and stress assignmentin disyllable words(including compound words) and word-class pairs. It also examines if knowledge of noun/verb grammatical class could influence the production of stress. Moreover, it aims to explore thecorrelation between misplacement of stressand vowel change by Saudi ESL learners. Thirty three Saudi advanced learners of ESL participated in three experiments to produce 20 English disyllable words, 20 English compound words, and 20 English disyllabic word-class pairs. The errors in stress placement were inversely not proportional to the level of proficiency in English as students continued to incorrectly assign stress in disyllable words, compound words and word-class pairs.  Most Saudi students placed initial stress on disyllabic words and final stress on compound words, a rule that is used with SA words. There is a correlation between stress misplacement and vowel change  in disyllable words and word-class pairs but not in compound words. Errors occur more frequently with word-class pairs regardless of the students' knowledge of grammatical class stress assignment rules.

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

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.

An Analysis of Batu Bara Malay Students’ Pronunciation in English Consonant Cluster and Word Stress

Pronunciation has many great important roles in one speaking performance. The inappropriate pronounced words cause the negative impact of misunderstanding. Therefore, this study aims to find out how the pronunciation of Batu Bara Malay students, particularly the English consonant clusters and the word stress, and to identify the factors affecting Batu Bara Malay students’ difficulties in pronouncing English consonant clusters and the word stress. The qualitative method was applied in this study. There were 25 students of seventh-grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Datuk Tanah Datar as the study subjects who speak the Malay Language as their mother tongue. The data were collected by recording students’ voice and interviewing. The researchers applied the Miles and Huberman model to analyze the data. The results are Batu Bara Malay students’ ability to pronounce English consonant clusters around 29%. Most of the students inaccurately utter the English consonant cluster word at the final position. The students’ ability in pronouncing English word by correct word stress rules around 30%. As the students' achievement under 50%, it means their ability in pronouncing consonant cluster and word stress is very low. These problems are caused by the existence of the mother tongue intervening in their process of learning another language and the distinction between English characteristics and nature compared with Indonesia Language (similar to the Malay language), particularly consonant clusters. English has more types of consonant. Besides that, the lack of both knowledge and pronunciation exercises on how to pronounce English word accurately for beginner learners so the students are unable to pronounce English consonant clusters and emphasize appropriate word stress.