The Perception Of Primary Stress In Initially Extended Simple Sentences: A Demonstration By Computer In Foreign Language Teacher Training

Abstract

The intelligibility of speech strongly depends on the placement of primary stress, which is a suprasegmetal phoneme. Pedagogically speaking, in ESL, EFL, SLA, and foreign language teacher education, the teaching of pronunciation and intonation of extended sentences to nonnative speakers (NNSs) has always been advocated to improve the intelligibility of their speech. Primary stress is a form of prominence, a degree of force with a syllable in a word, phrase, clause, and sentence is uttered, changing the meaning of utterances in spoken language. Primary stress can play a phonemic role, contrasting lexical pairs verb/noun/adjective. Acquisition of the correct pronunciation of the English words by hearing from the authentic texts is extremely difficult for foreign students, even the teachers, because English has several degrees of word stress like, primary, secondary, tertiary, and weak stresses, which are by nature are all suprasegmental phonemes. In this research, 25 initially extended simple sentences will be downloaded via Audacity program in 44100Hz from the Longman English Dictionary (2008) which will be orally given to 58 English Language Education Freshmen in a multiple choice test. The participants will listen to each extended simple sentence three times within 5-second intervals. They will be asked to pin down the primarily stressed words both in the extended part and the main clause. This way, their perception of the place of the primary stress in relation to standard English utterances will be evaluated. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.