Viện Đại học Mở Hà nội - Khoa Sau đại học

Roles of stress in Learning English

and HUBT Students’ difficulties with
using stress
Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong
Presented by Group 5:

Overview:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Content

Chapter 1: Definitions and roles of stress in English language.

1. Definitions
2. Roles of stress
3. Nature of stress
4. Presentation of stress
5. Production and perception of stress
6. What makes a syllable prominent
1- Loudness 2- length 3- pitch 4- quality

Chapter 2: Types of stress and how to place stress levels.

1. Types of stress
2. Which words are stressed and which are not
3. Levels of stress
4. Rules for placement of stress

Chapter 3: HUBT students’ difficulties with using stress in

learning English.

Part III: Conclusions

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Part I: Introduction:
In Vietnam English has been considered a tool of international communication and
together with its increasing importance, the need of learning English is becoming
more urgent than ever. But Vietnamese learners have met a lot of difficulties in
learning English, especially in pronunciation of English words and using stress in
English. In order to pronounce correctly, speakers must know where the stress of the
word is put on correctly. So that we facilitate the introduction of stress and distinguish
between “what is stress” and “why learners of English find difficult to use stress and
intonation in English”. The purpose of this paper is to definition, in the light of
relevant research, pedagogical experience, and understanding of the native speaker,
basic issues of English stress and intonation which are important to communicate
meaning. Correct stress and intonation will help students communicate better with
foreigners. As they learn to emphasize the sounds native speakers do and reduce or
eliminate the sounds native speakers hurry over, their pronunciation will improve.
Even their using of consonants and vowels will become much more accurate. Teach
these important aspects of pronunciation early so that students acquire clear English
pronunciation more easily.
1.1 The problem:
Word stress is definitely the key to understand spoken English and it is used so
naturally by native speakers of the English language that they are not even aware of
what they are doing. When non- native speakers talk to English natives without the
use of word stress they are likely to encounter two problems:
 The listener will find it difficult to understand the fast native speaking.
 The native speakers may find it difficult to understand the non- native speakers.
Much classroom time is spent counting syllables, enumerating detailed rules for stress
assignment and memorizing rules of diacritics used in the orthography. Stress
assignment and its rules are one of the topics covered on the vestibular, the nationwide
university entrance exam. Students in elementary schools study syllable structure and
division. Even by the second grade they know such words as ‘agreement’ ‘a word
whose stress falls on the next to last syllable’ and ‘antepenultimate’. The problem is
that many of the rules taught seem arbitrary and unrelated to each other.
1.2 A linguistic solution:
A linguistic account of stress in English can bring greater understanding and
simplicity to the description of communication. This could be of help to native
speakers themselves as well as to those attempting to learn English as a second

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language. Once primary stress is determined, secondary stress, phonon-tactic

constraints, and various phonological processes can be derived by rules. Metrical
phonology provides a useful framework for explaining the linguistic facts as well as
for predicting stress assignment and the use of some diacritics in the English
orthography.
1.3 Aims and objectives:
This research is mainly aimed at:
 Helping learners to have clear understanding about stress definition, roles of
stress and how to place the stress of a word.
 Pointing out some rules of word stress placement.
 Helping students pronounce the word correctly with correct stress placement.
With heterogeneous groups, we might be directing our efforts in the introduction to
features that only cause difficulty to students. Nonetheless, the teaching and learning
problems on the specific features of stress and intonation that are dealt with in this
paper are shared by many groups of students.

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Part II: Content

Chapter 1: Definitions and roles of stress in
English language
1. Definition:
Vietnamese and English respectively represent two contrastive prosodic types: tone
language and stress language. English has a system of word stress while Vietnamese,
a tonal language has no system of word stress but it has a system of lexically
distinctive tones. It is said that English is considered a stressed language while many
other languages are considered syllabic. What does that mean? It means that, in
English, we give stress to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some
students say eaten!). In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable
receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length).
In other word, English is a typical stressed language, which means that in an English
word there is a pattern of strong and weak syllables. If a word is pronounced in
isolation, one of its syllables is more prominent than any of the others; it is said to
carry primary stress (or the main stress of the word). Other things being equal, such a
syllable stands apart as being somewhat longer and louder; it is pronounced with a
characteristic high or changing pitch, and its vowel has a full, distinct quality. Longer
words may also contain strong syllables with less than the primary degree of stress
(typically, these are not marked by pitch movement). Such syllables are required in
order to achieve a balanced rhythm or to make the morphological structure of a word
clearer; in such cases we speak of secondary stresses. Weak syllables are reduced
phonetically, their vowels being often pronounced as ‘schwa ’ (the English
weak vowel [É™]). They sometimes disappear in fast speech, as
when family becomes fam’ly. In many stress languages (Spanish, Polish) stress is
mostly a matter of increased pitch or intensity, with little or no vowel reduction.
What is stress?
Stress is an important feature of English pronunciation and to become powerful
communicator of English one needs proficiency while using different stress patterns in
his communication.
 Stress is the degree of force with which a syllable or a word is uttered. It is also
defined as the degree of prominence a syllable has.
 Stress is an important feature of English pronunciation and students need
proficiency while using different stress patterns in learning English

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 Words with more than one syllable have a stressed syllable. In /teibl/ first syllable
is prominent.
 In committee and recommend second syllable is stressed.
 When we put a greater breath force on a syllable it becomes a stressed syllable.
Stress is also called the word accent of a sentence. If a syllable has more than one
syllable then one of the syllables stands out from the rest and this causes stress.
What is word stress?
In English, we do not say each syllable with the same force or strength. In one word,
we accentuate ONE syllable. We say one syllable very loudly (big, strong, important)
and all the other syllables very quietly.
Let’s take three words: photograph, photographer and photographic. Do they sound
the same when spoken? – No, because we accentuate (stress) ONE syllable in each
word. And it is not always the same syllable. So the shape of each word is different.
Examples:
‘Photograph;
Pho’tographer;
Photo’graphic
This happens in ALL words with 2 or more syllables: TEACHer, JaPAN, CHINa,
aBOVE, converSAtion, INteresting, imPORtant, deMAND…
The syllables that are not stressed are weak or small or quiet. Native speakers of
English listen for the STRESSED syllables, not the weak syllables. If students use
word stress in our speech, they will instantly and automatically improve their
pronunciation and their comprehension.
Try to hear the stress in individual words each time learners listen to English- on the
radio or in films for example. First step is to HEAR and recognize it. After that
students can USE it correctly.
There are two very important rules about words stress.
+ ONE word, one stress. (One word cannot have two stresses. So if you hear two
stresses, you have heard two words, not one word).
+ The stress is always on a vowel.
What is sentence stress?
Sentence stress is another golden key for speaking and understanding English. With
sentence stress, some words in a sentence are STRESSED (loud) and other words are
weak (quiet). Look at the following sentence: We want to go.

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Do we say every word with the same stress or force? No. We make the important
words BIG and the unimportant words small. What are the important words in this
sentence? Yes, that's right: WANT and GO.
2. Roles of stress:
In the field of trade and commerce, travel and tourism, banking, administration,
aviation and above Education, English has become necessary for everyday affairs of
modern world.
The desire to learn English is not very new and it is constantly growing by the day.
It is so because the spoken English has assumed a far greater role than it did ever
before.
 Many more people go on international tours and participate in international
seminars and conferences.
 Students need to improve their pronunciation skills but they always meet difficulties
in using stress in English.
Why stress is crucial in English?
Stress is crucial in English pronunciation. It can be called a grammatical device in
English. A part of the meanings of a word depends on stress. It serves to mark the
function of words in spoken English.
3. Nature of stress:
Stress has been mentioned several times already in this aspect without any attempt to
define what the word means. Nature of stress is simple enough that everyone can
understand that words like: father, open, camera, have first syllables as stressed. In
“potato”, “apartment”, relation middle syllable is stressed, whereas in about “receive”
and perhaps final syllable is stressed.
4. Presentation of stress:
A stressed syllable is denoted by placing a vertical line(‘) high up just before the
stressed syllable. Receive will be transcribed as /ri’si:v/. What are the
characteristics of stressed syllables that enable us to identify them? It is important to
understand that there are two different ways of approaching this question, one being to
consider what the speaker does in producing stressed syllables and the other being to
consider what characteristics of sound make a syllable seem to a listener to be
stressed.
Relations, potato, about, camera are some examples to show stress in transcription.
/ri’leiʃnz/; /pə’teitəʊ/; /ə’baʊt/; /’kæmrə/

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5. Production and perception of stress

 Production of the stressed or unstressed syllables depends mainly on the
speaker.
 While producing stressed syllables muscles that are used to expel the air from
the lungs are often more active.
 From perceptual point of view all stressed syllables have a common
characteristic of prominence.
6. What makes a syllable prominent?
Prominence: It would have been logically possible for every syllable to have exactly
the same loudness, pitch, and so on. (Some early attempts at speech synthesizers
sounded like this.) But human languages have ways to make some syllables more
prominent than others. A syllable might be more prominent by differing from the
surrounding syllables in terms of: loudness pitch length Prominence is relative to the
surrounding syllables, not absolute. (A stressed syllable that is nearly whispered will
be quieter than an unstressed syllable that is shouted.)
The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent.
In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed
syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). In other languages, they may
bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables (a pitch excursion),
depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic accent (loudness), qualitative
accent (full vowels) and quantitative accent (length). Stress may be characterized by
more than one of these characteristics. Further, stress may be realized to varying
degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes the difference between the
acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables may be minimal.
6.1- Loudness: Many people seem to feel that stressed syllables are louder than
unstressed. Loudness is a component of prominence. Take example of a non sense
word,(ba: ba: ba: ba), if one syllable is made louder than the others, it will be heard as
stressed.
6.2- Length: the length of a syllable has an important part to play in prominence. If one
syllable is made longer, it will be heard as stressed.
6.3- Pitch: pitch in speech is closely related to the frequency of vibration of the vocal
cords and to the musical notion of low- and high- pitched notes. Every voiced syllable
is said on some high pitch it will produce an effect of prominence. To place some
movement of pitch (e.g rising or falling) on a syllable is even more effective. However,
Ohala (1983) has found that features such as high or rising pitch to mark questions,

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low or falling pitch to mark non-questions, high pitch to signal politeness, low pitch to
signal assertiveness, etc. are remarkably similar across languages and cultures and
should consequently not cause difficulty to second language learners.
6.4- Quality: A syllable will become prominent if it contains a vowel, different in
quality. We can look on stressed syllables as occurring against a background of weak
syllables, i, u,ә.
Prominence, then, is produced by four main factors: (i) loudness, (ii) length, (iii) pitch
and (iv) quality. Generally these four factors work together in combination, though
syllables may sometimes be made prominent by means of only one or two of them.
Experimental work has shown that these factors are not equally important; the stronger
effect is produced by pitch, and length is also a powerful factor. Loudness and quality
have much less effect.

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Chapter 2: Types of stress and how to place stress

levels
1. Types of stress:
The ways stress manifests itself in the speech stream are highly language dependent.
In some languages, stressed syllables have a higher or lower pitch than non-stressed
syllables — so-called pitch accent (or musical accent). In other languages, they may
bear either higher or lower pitch than surrounding syllables (a pitch excursion),
depending on the sentence type. There are also dynamic accent (loudness),
qualitative accent (full vowels) and quantitative accent (length). Stress may be
characterized by more than one of these characteristics. Further, stress may be realized
to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes the difference between
the acoustic signals of stressed and unstressed syllables may be minimal.
In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focussed or accented words. For
instance, consider the dialogue:
"Is it brunch tomorrow?"
"No, it's dinner tomorrow."
In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the syllables of "tomorrow"
would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of "dinner", the
emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as "din" in
"dinner" are louder and longer. They may also have a different fundamental
frequency, or other properties. Unstressed syllables typically have a vowel which is
closer to a neutral position, while stressed vowels are more fully realized.
Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed
syllables. Research has shown, however, that although dynamic stress is accompanied
by greater respiratory force, it does not mean a more forceful articulation in the vocal
tract.
1.1-Word stress: It is an extra force put on a particular syllable of the word. It shows
that what syllable in a word is stressed e.g. useful, is stressed on the first syllable,
advantageous has a primary stress on first and secondary stress on third syllable. It
is usually fixed.
1.2-Sentence stress: It is an extra force put on a particular word in a sentence.
Sentence stress is not fixed. It depends on the speaker’s feelings and attitudes and
the message that he wants to get across to the listener. It shows what words in a
sentence are stressed.

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Examples:
-’Take a ‘book out of the ‘bag.
-’Where are you ‘going?
- It’s a ‘door.
-’Bring me a ‘pencil.
2. Which words are stressed and which are not?
Stressed words Unstressed words
Nouns Pronouns
Demonstrative + interrogative pronouns Prepositions
Main verbs Conjunctions
Adjectives Helping verbs
Adverbs
Examples:
1-Her complexion is ‘fair .(Adjective)
2-’Who is there? (Interrogative)
3-I ‘went to ‘Italy. (main verbs)
4-‘Stela is a good ‘girl. (noun)
5-’Peter went there ‘quickly. (adjective)
2.1-Rules of word stress
Stress on words in English is not tied to any particular syllable for the entire
vocabulary. Stress pattern of the each word in English has to be learnt individually.
There are certain groups of words which follow some regular stress pattern that
allow so few exceptions that they may be regarded as the rules of word stress.
These rules are based on the kinds of prefixes and suffixes or word endings.
- Primary stress (tonic/nuclear): is the strongest type of stress. It is marked by a
small vertical line high up just before the syllable it relates to.
- Secondary stress (non-tonic): it is weaker than primary stress, but stronger than
unstressed syllables. It is usually found in words of four or five syllables. It is
represented in transcription with a low mark.
- Unstressed can be regarded as being the absence of any recognizable amount of
prominence.
2.2-Rules related to prefixes:
We will only deal briefly with prefixes. Their effect on stress does not have the
comparative regularity, independence and predictability comparative regularity,
independence and predictability of suffixes, and there is no prefix of one or two
syllables that always carries primary stress. Consequently, the best treatment seems to

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be to say that stress in words with prefixes is governed by the same rules as those

words without prefixes. Many of the prefixes do not have any regular or predictable
effect on the location of word stress. The few that do are discussed below:
2.2.1-Prefix re
This prefix behaves in two different ways:
a- It carries the secondary stress when it adds the sense of again to the word to
which it is prefixed. In such situation it is pronounced as /ri:/
Examples: re’write, re’visit, re’issue.
b- Re remains unstressed when it does not stand for again. Also in this case it is
pronounced /ri/
Examples: repair, remember, and reduce.
2.2.2- Prefixes: il, im, in and un are employed to form the opposites of words to
which they are attached. Their effect on word stress can best be studied by
examining the following examples closely in respect of primary and secondary
stress.
Examples:

A B
il’legal ,ille’gitimate
il’literate ,ille’gality
im’movable ,imma’ture
im’modest ,imma’terial
in’accurate ,incon’sistent
ir,regular ,irre’spective
un’able ,una’voidable
2.3 Rules related to suffixes and word endings
There are two types of suffixes: In-flexional suffixes and Derivational suffixes
a- In flexional suffixes:
These are those suffixes when attached to words do not change their part of speech
or grammatical status. When attached to some word no other suffix can be added.
Such suffixes do not affect the stress of words.
Examples:
Words After adding In flexional suffix
‘picture ‘pictures
‘table ‘tables
‘Simple ‘simpler
‘enter ‘entering
‘play ‘played

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‘heavy ‘heavier
b- Derivational suffixes:
Derivational suffixes are those which we use to derive new words. They may or may
not change the part of speech of the word to which they are attached. Sometimes it is
possible to add more suffixes. Some derivational suffixes do not affect the stress
while others do. Derivational suffixes that do not affect the stress
Examples:
Words After adding In flexional suffix
‘person ‘personage
‘hermit ‘hermitage
‘differ ‘difference
‘utter ‘utterance

Derivational suffixes that bring change in stress:

Examples:
Millio’nair Addres’see
Cava’lier Tru’stee
Engi’neer Ru’pee

3. Levels of stress:
3.1-Primary level:
It is the stronger degree of stress.
Primary stress gives the final stressed syllable.
Primary stress is very important in compound words
3.2-Secondary level:
Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the pronunciation of a word.
Secondary stress gives the other lexically stressed syllables in a word.
Secondary stress is important primarily in long words with several syllables
3.3-Tertiary level (unnecessary degree of complexity)
It includes the fully unstressed vowels. An unstressed vowel is the vowel sound that
forms the syllable peak of a syllable that has no lexical stress.
3.4- Quaternary stress:

It includes the reduced vowels. Vowel reduction is the term in phonetics that refers
to various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to changes in

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stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word which are
perceived as "weakening”.
Primary stress is represented with a high mark and secondary stress with a low
mark. However this is worth noting that unstressed syllables containing schwa, i,u,
or a syllabic consonant will sound less prominent.
In English most of the words have only one stressed syllable, fairly long words or
those containing certain prefixes, such as re and some compound words may have
two stressed syllables.
Examples: under’stand, re’visit, re’commend, in’ability.
In such cases one of the syllables has the main or primary stress and other the
secondary stress. Primary stressed is marked with a high mark and secondary with
a low mark.
Examples:

Word Syllable having Syllable having

primary stress secondary stress
Examination nei zæ
Possibility bi P∂
Rewind waind ri:
Revisit vi ri:
Inability bi in
organization zei ):

3.5 Functional stress:

There are a number of two syllable words which function both as noun or adjective
and verbs. For example: con’duct, con’vict etc.
These words have stress on first syllable when they are used as noun or adjective.
and stress occurs on the second syllable when they are used as verbs.
Examples:
1-Her ‘conduct is good. (noun)
She con’ducts herself well. (verb)
2-What is our ‘import policy. (adjective)
We im’port this item from USA (verb)
3-He was ‘present here yesterday. (adjective)
Please pre’sent your case . (verb)
4-Tell me the ‘object of your case. (noun)
I ob’ject to your ideas. (verb)
5-What are your ‘subjects of study? (noun)

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He was sub’jected to torture. (verb)

3.6 Various stress patterns:
Stress in English words varies from word to word. In some words stress falls on first
syllable, while in other words it falls on the second third or fourth syllable.
3.6.1 Words stressed on first syllable

Two syllable words Three syllable words Longer words

‘husband ‘literature ‘aristocrat
‘stomach ‘character ‘benefactor
‘dozen ‘advertise comprehension
‘stupid ‘industry melancholy
‘splendid ‘atmosphere ‘pomegranate

3.6.2 Words stressed on second syllable

Two syllable words Three syllable words Longer words

Nar’rate Ap’pendix Par’ticipant
Bal’loon Ef’ficient Ri’diculous
Be’gin De’velop Re’sponsible
Draw’ee Sa’liva Ap’reciate
Ru’pee An’tenna rhi’noceros

3.6.3 Words stressed on third syllable

Three syllable words Four syllable words Five syllable words
Guaran’tee Appl’ication irre’proachabe
ciga’rette Opp’osition Irre’sponsible
engi’neer appa’ratus satis’factory
corre’spond corre’spondence irre’pressible
elec’tricity

3.6.4 Words stressed on the fourth syllable

Dedica’tee Civili’zation
Exami’nation Mechani’zation
Partici’pation Inferi’ority

4. Rules for placement of stress:

These rules are rather complicated! Probably the best way to learn where to put a
word stress is from experience. Listen carefully to spoken English and try to develop a
feeling for the "music" of the language.
When you learn a new word, you should also learn its stress pattern. If you keep a
vocabulary book, make a note to show which syllable is stressed. If you do not know,

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you can look in a dictionary. All dictionaries give the phonetic spelling of a word.
This is where they show which syllable is stressed, usually with an apostrophe (') just
before or just after the stressed syllable. (The notes at the front of the dictionary will
explain the system used.)
In spite of having some exceptions there are some rules:
-Whether word is morphologically simple or complex (containing one or more
affixes) or of being a compound word.
- What the grammatical category of the word is? (nouns, verbs ,adjectives)
- Number of the syllables.
- Phonological structure of the syllables.
When we put stress on a word we should be careful with strong and weak syllable
because: There are two basic categories of syllables:
1-strong syllables
2-weak syllables
Strong syllable: A strong syllable has a rhyme which either has a syllable peak which
is a long vowel or diphthong or a vowel followed by a coda (one or more consonants).
For example: die, heart, and bat.
Weak syllable: A weak syllable has a syllable peak which is a short vowel and no
coda unless the syllable peak is schwa. For example re in reduce, be in herbicide, pen
in open
One important thing is that only strong syllables can be stressed. Weak syllables are
always unstressed.
4.1 Stress in two syllable words:
In two syllable words either the first or the second syllable will be stressed not the
both.
4.1.1-verb:
a: If the second syllable of the verb is a strong then this second syllable will be
stressed. For example: apply, arrive, assist, attract.
b: If the final syllable is weak then first syllable is stressed. For example: enter,
envy, open, equal.
4.1.2-Adjectives:
Same rule will be applied for two syllable adjectives also. For examples: lovely,
divine, even, correct, hollow, and alive.
4.1.3-Nouns: Nouns require a different rule. If the second syllable contains a short
vowel then stress will usually come on the first syllable otherwise it will be on the
second syllable. For example: money, design, product, larynx, and balloon.

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4.1.4-Adverbs and prepositions:

Adverbs and prepositions seem to behave like verbs and adjective
4.2 Stress in Three syllable words:
4.2.1-verbs:
a- In verbs if the final syllable is strong it will be stressed e.g. entertain, resurrect.
b- If the last syllable is weak then it will be unstressed and stress will be placed on the
preceding syllable if that syllable is strong. For example: encounter, determine.
c- If both the second and third syllables are weak then the stress falls on the initial
syllable e.g. parody.
4.2.2 – Nouns + Adjectives (same rules of stress)
a- If the final syllable is weak or ends with /əu/ sound then it is unstressed.
b-If the syllable preceding this final syllable is strong then the middle syllable will
be stressed, potato, disaster synopsis.
c-If the second and third syllables are both weak then the first syllable is stressed
like quantity, emperor, cinema, custody.

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Chapter 3: HUBT students’ difficulties with

using stress in learning English
Most of our students at HUBT learn English grammar from books. That’s why their
sense of stress remains undeveloped.
This should be kept in mind that English words are pronounced with one dominant
syllable while the other syllables tend to get squashed and reduced.
Students at HUBT always put wrong stress on words and they also make mistakes
when they pronounce words.
They are week at distinguishing between stressed on 1 st syllable, 2nd syllable, 3rd
syllable…
A lot of students don’t understand what stress is in English, even in some high
schools, they completely weren’t taught this subject. That’s why most of students
answered wrongly. They don’t know well about stress, so they can’t improve their
pronunciation skill.
They don’t catch up with types of stress and they miss stress on words and sentences.
They aren’t taught stress carefully so they don’t pay attention how to pronounce word
correctly.
=>We survey 315 students with 5 questions at finance and banking faculty,
architecture faculty, and management faculty of HUBT and have results below:

1. Questions for survey

1. Have you ever done an English pronunciation course?
a. Yes b. No
2. Are nouns and verbs with two syllables stressed on the same place?
a. Yes b. No
3. How many types of stress are there?
a.2 b.3 c.4
4. What are various stress patterns?
a. Words stressed on the 1st syllable
b. Words stressed on the 2nd syllable
c. Words stressed on the 3rd syllable
d. Words stressed on the 4th syllable
e. All are correct
5. How to put stress on these words: employ, employment, application, civilization

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2. Result
.

Question Yes No

1. Have you ever done a pronunciation course? 7/315 298/31

(2.2 %) (97.8%)
a. Yes b. No
2. Are nouns and verbs stressed with two syllables on 103/315 212/315
(32.7%) (67.3%)
the same place?
a. Yes b. No
Question Right Wrong

3. How many types of stress are there? 89/315 226/315

(28%) (72%)
a.2 b.3 c.4

4. What are various stress patterns? 187/315 128/315

(59.3 %) (40.7 %)
a. Words stressed on the 1st syllable
b. Words stressed on the 2nd syllable
c. Words stressed on the 3rd syllable
d. Words stressed on the 4th syllable
e. All are correct

5. How to put Stress on the Stress on the Stress on the Stress on

stress on 1st syllable(%) 2nd syllable(%) 3rd syllable(%) the 4th
syllable(%)
employ 129/315 186/315
(40.9 %) (59.1 %)
‘employ emp’loy

Employment 73/315 (23.1%) 97/315 145/315

‘Employment (30.7%) (46.2%)
Emp’loyment Employ’ment

application 113/315 57/315 85/135 60/315

(35.8 %) (18.1 %) (26.9 %) (19.2 %)
‘application App’lication Appli’cation applica’tion

Civilization 58/315 67/315 95/315 95/315

(18.6 %) (21.2 %) (30.1 %) (30.1 %)
‘Civilization Ci’vilization Civi’lization Civili’zation

3. Evaluation:

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Foreign students in general and Vietnamese students in specific find it difficult to deal
with the correct stressing of English polysyllabic words, and it would be maddening
for anyone to learn the stress of each word separately. For this reason, and many more
related to efficient foreign language communication and efficient learning, teaching as
many English stress patterns and supporting them with appropriate drills is of
paramount importance and absolute priority. Time is a very big factor in deciding
what to teach to our students, we have to test the students and choose some lessons
about stress and intonation to teach them carefully. Deciding which lessons to focus
on is one of the hardest things we have to do. Though evidence indicates that teaching
pronunciation in the class does not result in any significant changes in the students'
pronunciation, we believe that it can't just be ignored. There are so many
interconnecting pieces to English and though the students' pronunciation may not
change, their ability to understand what is spoken might improve. We could spend a
lot of the term on just focusing on the stress patterns and on reporting information.
And we realize that stress patterns should be introduced to students as early as
possible. This would help them avoid the wrong accentual habits and build a strong
foundation for verbal language activity. The stipulation of stress patterns in the
English Language curriculum of Vietnamese Universities would certainly liberate
students in their search for more and varied vocabulary and their attitude towards
more efficient learning.
We are often surprised at how focusing on the "stress - timed" quality of English helps
students improve their pronunciation skills. Students often focus on pronouncing each
word correctly and therefore, they tend to pronounce in an unnatural manner. By
focusing on the stress factor in English - the fact that only principle words such as
proper nouns, principle verbs, adjectives and adverbs receive the "stress" students
soon begin sounding much more "authentic" as the cadence of the language begins to
ring true.
Teaching our students English stress placement is a daunting task and a big challenge,
but it is a minimal price to pay if we want to encourage them to adopt and apply an
effective learning strategy. This will certainly have a beneficial effect on their overall
communication strategies.

4. Suggested solutions:

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There are some rules about which syllable to stress. But the rules are rather
complicated! Probably the best way to learn is from experience.
 Listen carefully to spoken English and try to develop a feeling for the “music” of
the language.
 When you learn a new word, you should also learn its stress pattern. If you keep a
vocabulary book, make a note to show which syllable is stressed.
 It is necessary for students do an English pronunciation course (focus on stress)
before doing other English learning skills.
 Teachers should correct students’ mistakes when they speak in English.
 It is essential to design various stress exercises for students.
 Encourage students to listen to the radio, CNN, BBC….to compare with native
speakers.
 Practice with their friends, teachers and foreigners everyday.

Part III: Conclusions

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English pronunciation depends on stress to a great deal. In order to become a powerful

communicator of English we must learn all the rules of stress mentioned earlier.
English is a language that borrowed words from 8000 languages of the world. All
rules regarding the stress patterns of these languages are impossible to learn however
if we learn some basic rules of we can improve our pronunciation a lot.
Practice with Pronunciation Using English is a stressed language and, as such, good
pronunciation depends a lot on the ability to accent the correct words and successfully
use intonation to make sure you are understood. Simply put, spoken English stress the
principal elements in sentence - content words - and quickly glides over the less
important words - function words. Nouns, principal verbs, adjectives and adverbs are
all content words. Pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions are
function words and are pronounced quickly moving towards the more important
words. This quality of quickly gliding over less important words is also known as
'connected speech’. We are continually surprised to see how much our students’
pronunciation improves when they focus on reading sentences focusing on only
pronouncing the 'stressed' words well! This feature includes practical exercises to
improve your pronunciation skills by improving the stressed character of your
pronunciation when speaking in full sentences.
In this article we have outlined the roles of stress in learning English and the
difficulties our students have with listening and speaking in relation to English as a
stressed language and suggested some ways to help students with pronunciation. It
should be noted that stressed language is only one of many factors that influence how
we say something. Speech rhythms change according to the meaning the speaker
wants to convey, who the speaker is talking to and the context they are speaking in.
It’s also quite difficult area for students to work on, so don’t expect instant results.
With some experiences in learning and teaching English pronunciation, especially
stress on words and sentences we might be directing our efforts in the topic to features
that only cause difficulty to students and help them to use stress in English. Teaching
our students how to use English stress is a daunting task and a big challenge, but it is a
minimal price to pay if we want to encourage them to adopt and apply an effective
learning strategy. This will certainly have a beneficial effect on their overall
communication strategies.
We thank to all authors who provide us materials follow. We would also like to thank
our Supervisor Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong who helps and encourages us a lot to finish
our work on this topic.

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