Acquisition of English lexical stress by English language learners

Abstract

This study examines the production and perception of English lexical stress by English language learners (ELLs) whose native languages are Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. The choice of these first languages (L1s) is intended to examine the role of a stressless language (Chinese) and languages with different stress patterns than English (Arabic and Spanish). The scope of this study is limited to examining primary stress in English words of four and five syllables. The main aim of the study is to contribute a pedagogical procedure to help the students acquire English stress. The secondary aim is to assess the impact of the L1 on English stress acquisition and to assist English language instructors to teach stress more effectively. The study is designed to start with a pretest to diagnose the students’ proficiency levels vis-à-vis English stress. Next, the researcher creates an intensive training session on the production and perception of English stress. The instruction makes use of a rule illustrated via a three-word mnemonic: Colorado, Philadelphia, and globalization. The study ends with two posttests to measure the efficacy of the training session and the acquisition rate. Outcomes reveal that Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish ELLs all face difficulty with English stress production, but the degree of difficulty varies according to the L1. Stress perception is an easier task for these ELLs. As far as the impact of the L1 is concerned, Chinese ELLs exhibit the most difficulty in producing stress. Nevertheless, they are good at English stress perception. Arabic and Spanish ELLs did not show the same difficulty. Finally, this pedagogical procedure is shown to be effective in improving English stress production and perception.