Speakers
Description
Recognizing the correct stress on words and pronouncing the words with correct word stress is very important in learning a language as well as in testing. From the context of my high school where stress recognition and production among students were not as accurate as expected, especially the presence of some word stress recognition test items in the national high school examination. With the aim of finding out the problems of not being able to recognize word stress among students and solutions for word stress improvement, a study was carried out among 57 students of grade 11. Pre – test was applied to diagnose students’ actual performance of test recognition of two – syllable, three – syllable and four – syllable words, then a set of instructional lessons on stress were applied to assist them with word stress and finally, a post – test was employed to measure students’ performance of word stress. The results show that after a set of lexical stress instructions including exercises on the definition of stress, vowels, the knowledge of part of speech, students enhanced their performance from 61% to 90% of correct word stress. The study draws on some implications for the teachers to design specialized lessons on stress and introduce to the students at the beginning of the semesters and review them from time to time to improve their students’ placement of stress on words both in written and spoken forms.
