Primary Stress and Intelligibility:
Research to Motivate the Teaching
of Suprasegmentals
By Laura D. Hahn
Afra
MA0963004
Carolyn MA0963006
Josh
MA0963015
Arwen MA0963005
Introduction
The relationship of the primary
stress and intelligibility motivates
The teaching of suprasegmentals
What is the
Suprasegmental?
Stress
Intonation
Timing
Rhythm
juncture
The Purpose of This Study
Whether the correct placed
primary
stress
affects
the
processing, comprehension, and
evaluations of the native speak
listeners
Background knowledge
1.Teaching the NNS suprasegmentals does improve the
intelligibility of their speech.
2. Isolated primary stress
※NNS means the nonnative
speakers
How to realize the primary
stress
By combining a detectable change
in pitch with increased vowel
duration and intensity
Example:
A: Are you ready?
B: I’m always ready.
The GNSC
(Given-new stress connection):
new and contrastive information is
presented in stressed elements,
and old or given information is
expressed in unstressed elements.
The Chinese
learners’use
the primary stress
Chinese learners used pitch
movement of every word in a
message unit.
Example:
Correct
1
2
Wrong
1
1
Living room→ Living room
Book store → Book store
Two Problems
1.Misplacing primary stress
2.Stressing all words
Method
An experimental study was designed
using oral texts constructed to
systematically vary the GNSC.
Subjects
90 subjects, 30 each to 3 experimental groups
They are first-semester freshman students,
come from Midwestern public university and
speak North American English
Materials
Three versions of a text recording by a
Korean. Digital editing techniques make
sure these three versions equal, including
volume and length (4.5 minutes).
Three versions
Version A: GNSC was maintained.
Version B: GNSC was violated through
misplaced primary stress.
Version C: GNSC was violated through
absence of primary stress.
The main purpose
1. Measure of Difficulty Processing
Discourse
* Dual-task paradigm
* The participants’ primary task was
A. to understand and remember the
lecture’s content
B. to monitor for a tone presented in the
background of the speech
2. Measure of Comprehension
* The study measured in two ways
(1)subjects were asked to write down as much as
they could recall from the lecture
(2)a short-answer comprehension quiz
* The questions elicited each main idea in the
lecture.
3. Measure of Evaluative Reactions to the
Speaker
* Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES)
Item
Catalog: use to collect feedback from students on
their classroom instruction.
Procedure
30
30
30
First, the researcher explained the instructions and
the format of the experiment.
Second, specific instructions and practice for
the reaction time task were provided on the
computer.
Third, the subjects were then informed
that they would be listening to a TA and
were then asked to complete the reaction
time task, the recall, the quiz, and the
ICES ratings in that order.
RESULTS
As shown in the following
Table:
3
Discussion
This consistent pattern in the
results supports the general
proposition that correct primary
stress in extended nonnative
discourse
facilitates
communication.
Implications for ITA programs
and curricula
It therefore seems logical that the
ITA curriculum should include
instruction in primary stress.
A
broad
perspective
that
acknowledges the various roles
that pronunciation features play in
communicating
meaning
in
discourse would enhance ITA
programs and materials.
Implications for pronunciation
pedagogy and materials
Fortunately, primary stress can
be learned, primary stress is both
teachable and valuable for
communicating.
Conclusion
This research provides evidence that
primary stress contributes significantly to
the intelligibility of nonnative discourse,
and it strengthens the broadly stated
claims in the pedagogical literature on
ESL
pronunciation
that
teaching
suprasegmentals is important.