An Analysis Of English Word Stress Perception And Production By Chinese College Non-English Major Students

English word stress is one of the most salient and significant suprasegmental features,incorrect assignment of which will exert a negative impact on speakers' intelligibility and comprehensibility.Because it is frequently observed that Chinese EFL learners commit word stress placement errors,error tendencies in main stress placement in the production and perception of the real English words by Chinese college non-English major students will be the focus of the current research.Possible reasons behind the errors in word stress perception and production are to be examined so as to provide some insightful pedagogical suggestions on future pronunciation lessons.There are a total of six chapters in the current thesis.Specifically speaking,research background,significance as well as outline of the thesis are introduced in the first chapter.The second chapter covers and clarifies relevant researches and terminologies.The third chapter contains fundamental theoretical frameworks.The fourth chapter deals with research methodology,and the fifth chapter is concerned with data analysis and data discussion.Ultimately,the final chapter servers as the conclusion part where pedagogical suggestions and research limitations are included.In the study,96 non-English major subjects were recruited from Shanghai-based universities.They were all undergraduate students and ranged in age from 17 to 21 with the mean age of 19 years.None of them were reported to have any hearing and speech disorders.Questionnaire and tests that were involved with perception and production were used to analyze the word stress perception and production by Chinese college non-English major students.By analyzing research data,relevant conclusions can be listed in the following.First of all,Chinese college non-English major students have difficulties in perceiving and producing word stress in English words.Secondly,factors such as the number of syllables and lexical classes will influence word stress perception and placement.And stress pattern of morphologically similar words will also exert some influence on word stress placement.Thirdly,as for the overall stress misplacement tendencies,both the perception and production results indicate that the initial syllable is the one that is most likely to be both misperceived and misplaced as the stressed syllable.Last but not least,with regard to subjects' performance on the stress production of compounds and of words with identical spelling but different stress patterns,results revealed that subjects have a poor mastery of stress rules or theories,indicating that teachers ought to pay more attention to this particular aspect in the future teaching.In conclusion,errors on word stress perception and production can be chiefly attributed to the following reasons: different prosodic systems between English and Chinese,students' inadequate knowledge of word stress rules or theories and lack of sufficient attention paid to word stress.Based on the research findings,the study concludes with a few pedagogical suggestions,hopefully providing some implications for the pronunciation teaching in China.