Towards An Optimized Treatment Of Word Stress In English-Chinese Learner’s Dictionary Apps

This thesis aims to improve the treatment of English word stress in English-Chinese learner’s dictionary(henceforth ECLD)apps based on the word stress misplacement errors by Chinese learners of English as a Foreign Language(henceforth EFL).As an auxiliary tool for English learning,ECLD apps are supposed to solve the problems of word stress misplacement by Chinese EFL learners.However,research on the representation of word stress in learner’s dictionaries is scarce,and current practices of learner’s dictionaries are not good enough in terms of their representation of word stress.Therefore,this study follows the procedure below to achieve the objective.First of all,this study sorts out and analyzes the stress errors in College Learners’ Spoken English Corpus(henceforth COLSEC).Meanwhile,based on other related research,it summarizes and classifies the misplacement errors that Chinese EFL learners often make in their production of word stress,which mainly include confusions about the stress placement between cognate words,between word-class pairs,and between compounds.This study also attempts to interpret the formation mechanisms behind these errors,claiming that it may mainly be the phonological differences between Chinese and English as well as the wrong analogy between the words learned earlier and later that cause the learners’ misplacement errors in their production of English word stress.Second,taking as a benchmark the Chinese EFL learners’ word stress misplacement errors,the thesis evaluates the present situation of three ECLD apps.It is found that although the three dictionary apps have their own unique treatment of word stress,they lack accurate,sufficient or lucid account of stress information and of stress patterns for the words that Chinese users incline to make errors in,which cannot fully meet the learners’ demand for stress acquisition.Finally,based on Chinese EFL learners’ pain points and needs of English word stress acquisition as well as the shortcomings of ECLD apps in word stress representation,this study proposes,in light of the multidimensional definition theory,the following suggestions for ECLD apps: 1)having headwords and phonetic transcriptions syllabificated and highlighting the stressed syllables;2)providing pronunciation notices for those cognate words,word-class pairs and compounds,in which the learners tend to make errors;3)setting up comparisons between synforms,between compounds and noun phrases,and between members of word-class pairs;4)demonstrating stress rules in the appendices,in the pop-up windows or in the form of video microlecture and building hyperlinks between entries and their relevant information parts.These suggestions may have the following advantages: 1)stress placement discrimination aimed at the difficult points in learning would enable Chinese EFL learners to know the differences of stress placement between synforms,between word-class pairs and between compound nouns and noun phrases,so as to avoid confusions;2)the eye-catching representation means would help the learners notice better the stress information;3)the explicit representation of word stress rules would make it possible for the learners to apply them to the stress acquisition of other words that share the same stress patterns.In sum,the foregoing suggestions aimed at Chinese EFL learners’ difficult points in learning may enable them to pay more attention to the knowledge of English word stress as well as stress patterns,and therefore help them better acquire English word stress.