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WORD-STRESS – A SOURCE OF UNINTELLIGIBILITY IN ENGLISH

WORD-STRESS – A SOURCE OF UNINTELLIGIBILITY IN ENGLISH M. Benrabah The present paper is concerned with English word-stress, a feature that is essential for efficient communication. The difficulty to assign this phonological aspect will be considered äs well äs the effect of its misplacement on comprehension. As an Illustration, it will be shown how English word-stress differs from that of another stress-timed language, namely Arabic Finally, emphasis will be placed on the need to teach this feature of English pronunciation. After a "swing of the pendulum" in mid-eighties, pronunciation teaching has - again should we say - emerged äs a skill that teachers cannot do without. The number of books concerned with the subject and published since then (eg. Morley, 1987; Kenworthy, 1987; Brown, 1991; Avery and Ehrlich, 1992; Brown, 1992; Morley, 1994; Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994; Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) is proof of this new popularity. When the developers of the Communicative Approach first emerged, they flatly rejected teaching pronunciation on the grounds that its proponents aimed at accuracy via meaningless drilling, at the expense of fluency and meaningful interaction (Brown and Yule, 1983: 26-27). Yet, when pronunciation had its heyday in the fifties and early sixties, leading authorities in the field of phonetics clearly http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching de Gruyter

WORD-STRESS – A SOURCE OF UNINTELLIGIBILITY IN ENGLISH

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Walter de Gruyter
ISSN
0019-042X
eISSN
1613-4141
DOI
10.1515/iral.1997.35.3.157
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

M. Benrabah The present paper is concerned with English word-stress, a feature that is essential for efficient communication. The difficulty to assign this phonological aspect will be considered äs well äs the effect of its misplacement on comprehension. As an Illustration, it will be shown how English word-stress differs from that of another stress-timed language, namely Arabic Finally, emphasis will be placed on the need to teach this feature of English pronunciation. After a "swing of the pendulum" in mid-eighties, pronunciation teaching has - again should we say - emerged äs a skill that teachers cannot do without. The number of books concerned with the subject and published since then (eg. Morley, 1987; Kenworthy, 1987; Brown, 1991; Avery and Ehrlich, 1992; Brown, 1992; Morley, 1994; Dalton and Seidlhofer, 1994; Celce-Murcia et al., 1996) is proof of this new popularity. When the developers of the Communicative Approach first emerged, they flatly rejected teaching pronunciation on the grounds that its proponents aimed at accuracy via meaningless drilling, at the expense of fluency and meaningful interaction (Brown and Yule, 1983: 26-27). Yet, when pronunciation had its heyday in the fifties and early sixties, leading authorities in the field of phonetics clearly

Journal

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching – de Gruyter

Published: Jan 1, 1997

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