Arab learners’ stress perception and production of English multisyllable items
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/efe-2023-32-111-130Keywords:
stress production, stress perception, English word stress, Arabic word stress, Arab EFL learnersAbstract
Mastering word stress is a crucial part of learning the English language because it is a vital part and parcel of word recognition and intelligibility. Arab EFL learners complain about the mystifying and elusive English stress patterns. This research examines their stress production and perception of di-, tri- and polysyllabic English words. Arab learners initially produced 90 infrequent English words with various syllable structures and word classes. They then identified the stressed syllables when hearing the words from native speakers. Analysis of the data showed that Arabs had a serious problem producing English word stress correctly owing to their tendency to mainly stress ultimate heavy syllables — a strategy usually employed in Arabic. Their performance on the stress identification task was much better than the production task but still gave problems, especially with tri- and tetrasyllabic utterances. Syllabi have to comprise stress drills in conjunction with their L1 stress patterns to help them overcome their difficulties in stressing English words.
References
Abboud-Haggar, S. (2015). Syllabic structure and stress in Cairene Arabic: A didactic approach. MEAH: Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, 64, 19–30. https://revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/meaharabe/article/view/14186
Almbark, R., Bouchhioua, N., & Hellmuth, S. (2014). Acquiring the phonetics and phonology of English word stress: Comparing learners from different L1 backgrounds. Concordia Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 5, 19–35.
Altmann, H. (2006). The perception and production of second language stress: A cross-linguistic experimental study [Doctoral dissertation]. UMI Publishing.
Altmann, H., & B. Kabak. (2011). Second language phonology. In: N. C. Kula, B. Botma, & K. Nasukawa (Eds.), Continuum companion to phonology (pp. 298–319). Continuum.
Alzi’abi, S. E. (2011). Weak forms: How do Arabic-speaking learners of English use them? Damascus University Journal for Arts and Humanities, 27(3–4), 119–144.
Alzi’abi, S. E. (2017). Exploring Arab EFL learners’ production of weak-form words. The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL, 6(1), 69–90.
Alzi’abi, S. E. (forthcoming). On Arab EFL learners’ production of words with ‘-ate’. RESLA: Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics.
Amer, M. M., & Amer, W. M. (2011). The role of explicit instruction in English word stress patterns in an EFL Arab university context. Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching, 7(2), 71–78.
Anani, M. (1989). Incorrect stress placement in the case of Arab learners of English. IRAL: International Review of Applied Linguistics, 27(1), 15–22. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1989.27.1.15
Andrade, M. (2005). Performance of Japanese EFL learners on a test of English syllabification, word stress, sentence focus, and thought groups. Sophia Junior College Faculty Bulletin, 25, 1–25.
Archibald, J. (1993). Language learnability and L2 phonology: The acquisition of metrical parameters. Springer.
Archibald, J. (1997). The acquisition of English stress by speakers of nonaccentual languages: Lexical storage vs. computation of stress. Linguistics, 35(1), 167–181. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1997.35.1.167
Baese-Berk, M. M. (2019). Interactions between speech perception and production during learning of novel phonemic categories. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81, 981–1005. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01725-4
Baptista, B. O. (1984). English stress rules and native speakers. Language and Speech, 27(3), 217–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383098402700302
Basri, H. (2010). A comparative account of Indonesian and English stress patterns: Impacts [to] the teaching of English to Indonesian students. In Y. Nasanius (Ed.), Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya 8 (Kolita 8) (pp. 345–349). Atma Jaya.
Bauer, L., & Nation, I. S. P. (2020). English morphology for the language teaching profession. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367855222
Brown, A. (Ed.) (1991). Teaching pronunciation: A book of readings. Routledge.
Brawerman-Albini, A., & Becker, M. R. (2014). Perception and production of English stress by Brazilian speakers. Concordia Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 5, 73–84.
Barzilai, M. L. (2021). Phonetic & phonological salience effects in different speech processing tasks. In R. Bennett, R. Bibbs, M. L. Brinkerhoff, M. J. Kaplan, S. Rich, N. Van Handel, & M. Wax Cavallaro (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2020). Linguistic Society of America. https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.4898
Caspers. A., & Kepinska J. (2011). The influence of word-level prosodic structure of the mother tongue on production of word stress in Dutch as a second language. In W. S. Lee, & E. Zee (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2011) (pp. 420–323). International Phonetic Association.
Celce-Murcia, M., Briton, D. M., & Goodwin, J. M. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages. Cambridge University Press.
Chantaruchikapong, N. (2015). Phonological development by Thai learners of English: Stress pattern perspective. EGSPLL: Essex Graduate Student Papers in Language and Linguistics On-line, 15, 3–42.
Checklin, M. (2012). What in the world do we know about word stress? A review of what it is and how to teach it. TESOL in Context, Special Edition S3, 379–397.
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of English. Harper & Row.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587951
Cutler, A. (2015). Lexical Stress in English Pronunciation. In M. Reed, & J. M. Levis (Eds.), The Handbook of English Pronunciation (pp. 106–124). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118346952.ch6
Cutler, A., & Carter, D. M. (1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language, 2(3–4), 133–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2308(87)90004-0
Dauer. R. (1993). Accurate English: A complete course in pronunciation. Prentice Hall.
de Jong, K. D., & Zawaydeh, B. A. (1999). Stress, duration, and intonation in Arabic word-level prosody. Journal of Phonetics, 27(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1998.0088
de Leeuw, E., Stockall, L., Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, D., Masip, C. (2021). Illusory vowels in Spanish-English sequential bilinguals: evidence that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production. Second Language Research, 37(4), 587–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658319886623
Dresher, E., & J. Kaye (1990). A computational learning model for metrical phonology. Cognition, 34(2), 137–195. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(90)90042-I
Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastián‐Gallés, N., & Mehler, J. (1997). A distressing ‘deafness’ in French? Journal of Memory and Language, 36(3), 406–42. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1996.2500
Field, J. (2005). Intelligibility and the listener: The role of lexical stress. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 399–423. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588487
Gallego, J. C. (1990). The intelligibility of three nonnative English speaking teaching assistants: An analysis of student-reported communication breakdowns. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 219–237. http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/L412004998
Gimson, A. (1980). An introduction to the pronunciation of English (3rd ed.). Edward Arnold.
Ghosh, M., & Levis, J. M. (2021). Vowel quality and direction of stress shift in a predictive model explaining the varying impact of misplaced word stress: Evidence from English. Frontiers in Communication, 6, Article ID 628780. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.628780
Grosjean, F., & Gee, J. P. (1987). Prosodic structure and spoken word recognition. Cognition, 25(1–2), 135–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(87)90007-2
Guion, S. G. (2005). Knowledge of English word stress patterns in early and late Korean-English bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27(4), 503–533. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263105050230
Guion, S. G., Harada, T., & Clark, J. J. (2004). Early and late Spanish-English bilinguals’ acquisition of English word stress patterns. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728904001592
Helal, S. (2014). Stress in English: Prosodic and rhythmic complexity for Arab learners. Concordia Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 5, 361–294.
Hismanoglu, M. (2012). Teaching word stress to Turkish EFL (English as a foreign language) learners through internet-based video lessons. US-China Education Review A, 1, 26–40.
Honbolygó, F., Kóbor, A., German, B., & Csépe, V. (2020). Word stress representations are language‐specific: Evidence from event‐related brain potentials. Psychophysiology, 57(5), https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13541
Jangjamras, J. (2011). Perception and production of English lexical stress by Thai speakers (Publication No. 3492553) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Jenkins, J. (2002). A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus for English as an international language. Applied Linguistics, 23(1), 83–103. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/23.1.83
Kang, Y., Baek, S., & Yim, M. (2008). Stress processing sensitivity in reading Korean and English words. In R. E. O. Roxas (Ed.), Proceedings of the 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 22nd) (pp. 225–234). De La Salle University.
Kang, O., Rubin, D., & Pickering, L. (2010). Suprasegmental measures of accentedness and judgments of language learner proficiency in oral English. Modern Language Journal, 94(4), 554–566. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01091.x
Karjo, C. H. (2016). Accounting for L2 learners’ errors in word stress placement. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(2), 199–208. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v5i2.1344
Kenworthy, J. (1987). Teaching English pronunciation. Longman.
Khalifa, M. (2017). A contrastive metrical analysis of main word stress in English and Cairene colloquial Arabic. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Kharma, N., & Hajjaj, A. (1989). Errors in English among Arabic speakers: Analysis and remedy. Longman.
Kijak, A. M. (2009). How stressful is L2 stress? A cross-linguistic study of L2 perception and production of metrical systems [Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University]. LOT. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/34050
Kiparsky, P. (2003). Syllables and moras in Arabic. In C. Féry & R. van de Vijver (Eds.), The syllable in optimality theory (pp. 147–182). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497926.007
Ladefoged, P. (2011). A course in phonetics (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
MacKay, D. G. (1987). The organization of perception and action: A theory for language and other cognitive skills. Springer.
Mashaqba, B., & Huneety, A. (2018). Emergence of iambs in Eastern Arabic: Metrical iambicity dominating optimal nonfinality. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 15(3), 15–36.
McCarthy, J. J. (1979). On stress and syllabification. Linguistic Inquiry, 10(3), 443–465. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178121
Meara, P. (1992). EFL vocabulary tests. Swansea.
Mitchell, T. F. (1960). Prominence and syllabication in Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 23(2), 369–389. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00149997
Morley, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 481–520. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586981
Nguyen, T. A. T., Ingram, C. J., & Pensalfini, J. R. (2008). Prosodic transfer in Vietnamese acquisition of English contrastive stress patterns. Journal of Phonetics, 36(1), 158–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2007.09.001
Ou, S. C., & Guo, Z. C. (2015). The effect of stress on English word recognition by native speakers of typologically different languages. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015) (Article Id 0373). International Phonetic Association.
Özçelik, Ö. (2021). L2 acquisition of a complex stress pattern: UG-constrained learning paths in Khalkha Mongolian. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article ID 627797. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627797
Pallier, C., Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). A limit on behavioral plasticity in speech perception. Cognition, 64(3), B9–B17. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0010-0277(97)00030-9
Porzuczek, A., & Rojczyk A. (2017). English word stress in Polish learners’ speech production and metacompetence. Research in Language, 15(4), 312–323. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rela-2017-0018
Porzuczek, A., & Rojczyk, A. (2019). EFL pronunciation teaching to Polish English studies majors. In D. Gabryś-Barker (Ed.), Challenges of foreign language instruction in a university context (pp. 9–25). University of Silesia Press.
Rauber, A. S., Watkins, M. A., Silveira, R., & Koerich, R. D. (Eds.) (2010). The acquisition of second language speech. Studies in honor of Professor Barbara O. Baptista. Editora Insular.
Roach, P. (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press.
Rojczyk, A., & Porzuczek, A. (2019). Speeded identification and discrimination of correct word stress in English by Polish leaners. In J. Szpyra-Kozłowska, & M. Radomski (Eds.), Phonetics and phonology in action (pp. 253–264), Peter Lang.
Solé Sabater, M. J. (1991). Stress and rhythm in English. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 4, 145–162. https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.1991.4.13
Tarone, E. (1987). The phonology of interlanguage. In G. Ioup, & S. H. Weinberger (Eds.), Interlanguage phonology: Acquisition of a second language sound system (pp. 70–85). Newbury House.
Waniek-Klimczak, E. (2015). Factors affecting word stress recognition by advanced Polish learners of English. In E. Waniek-Klimczak, & M. Pawlak (Eds.), Teaching and Researching the Pronunciation of English. Studies in Honour of Włodzimierz Sobkowiak (pp. 189–204). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11092-9_11
Watson, J. C. E. (2002). The phonology and morphology of Arabic. Oxford University Press
Watson, J. C. E. (2011). Word stress in Arabic. In M. Oostendorp, C. Ewen, E. Hume, & K. Rice. (eds.). The Blackwell companion to phonology (Vol. 5) (pp. 2990–3019). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444335262.wbctp0124
Wayland, R., Guion, S., Landfair, D., & Li, B. (2006). Native Thai speakers’ acquisition of English word stress patterns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35(3), 285–304. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-006-9016-9
Yoshikawa, L., & Leung, C. Y. (2014). Use of lexical stress during oral reading among Japanese EFL learners. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 4(5), 573–584. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2014.45050
Youssef, A., & Mazurkewich, I. (1998). The acquisition of English metrical parameters and syllable structure by adult native speakers of Egyptian Arabic. In F. Suzanne, G. Martohardjono & W. O’Neil (Eds.), The generative study of second language (pp. 303–332). Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.
Yu, V. Y., & Andruski, J. E. (2010). A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39(4), 323–344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-009-9142-2
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
All articles published online by Estudios de Fonética Experimental are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED), unless otherwise noted. Estudios de Fonética Experimental is an open access journal. Estudios de Fonética Experimental is hosted by RCUB (Revistes Científiques de la Universitat de Barcelona), powered by Open Journal Systems (OJS) software. The copyright is not transferred to the journal: authors hold the copyright and publishing rights without restrictions. The author is free to use and distribute pre and post-prints versions of his/her article. However, preprint versions are regarded as a work-in-progress version used as internal communication with the authors, and we prefer to share postprint versions.
