The Effect Of Singing English Songs On Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of Stress Pattern

According to the classification of language rhythm,English is a kind of stress-timed language while Chinese belongs to syllable-timed language.The difference between these two languages in the aspect of speech rhythm poses difficulty for Chinese EFL learners to acquire English rhythm.Because of negative transfer of syllable-timed Chinese,Chinese EFL learners tend to stress every word without strong and weak interval,thus generate plural stress that leaves listeners with an impression of syllable-timed English rhythm.Plural stress disrupts learners in spoken and listening English,so it is both necessary and important to conduct research on how to minimize the negative effect of plural stress.This study aims at finding in what degree singing English songs contributes to eliminate learners’ plural stress and providing some pedagogical suggestions.In order to explore the plural stress of Chinese EFL learners objectively and comprehensively,methods of experimental phonetics were used to make comparison between English native speaker and Chinese EFL learners in terms of English stress pattern and the acoustic analysis of English stress.40 participants among 133 students were selected to complete the reading test and had their voice recorded in this study.Reading material was from English Pronunciation in Use(Elementary)published by Cambridge University Press and standard recording of English native speaker was used to make comparison.In order to guarantee the effectiveness of this research,after one pre-test,English stress instruction was implemented before carrying out three post-tests to raise learners’ English stress awareness.Analysis of English stress pattern and acoustic analysis of English stress in this study revealed the following facts:(1)The sound wave fluctuation of participants was far less prominent than that of native speaker;speech segments of participants were not accord with native speaker,whose speech shows strong and weak interval clearly.(2)In terms of duration,pitch and intensity,compared with native speaker,there was no significant difference between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables from theparticipants,and the plural stress generated by Chinese EFL learners was prominent.Before and after singing English songs training,compared with native speaker,results of rhythmic metrics were as follows:(1)Before listening and singing English songs training,changes were unnoticeable in learners’ consonantal intervals duration and formed a huge gap compared with that of native speaker;learners produced a higher percentage of vocalic intervals,changes were small in vocalic intervals duration.(2)After listening and singing English songs training,no significant changes were found in the value of participants’ consonantal metrics,which still formed a wide gap compared with that of native speaker,but such variations do not distinguish the stress pattern of different languages;vocalic metrics from learners approached to the level of native speaker,and showed significant improvement after English stress instruction.On the whole,plural stress generated by Chinese EFL learners was corrected effectively by such training.Based on research findings,the present study may share some suggestions on teachers and students in English pronunciation.First,EFL learners are advised to sing English songs to cultivate the sense of English rhythm so as to overcome plural stress.Second,teachers are suggested to improve learners’ phonological awareness and perception by English rhythm instruction and practice,not merely the speech output from students’ side.Third,some speech visualization software such as Cool Edit and Praat can be offered to help learners acquire English stress and rhythm.