English Word Stress in Polish Learners’ Speech Production and Metacompetence

Abstract

<jats:p>This paper focuses on the relations between conscious and subconscious aspects of English word stress acquisition. Using two tasks – reading and written word stress identification, we test metacompetence and production accuracy in the pronunciation of Polish learners, first year and third year English studies majors. The analysis of the collected data and correlations between the students’ metalinguistic knowledge and production accuracy, including error patterns and proportions, leads to conclusions concerning the significance of language awareness, learning experience and, indirectly, explicit didactic instruction for English word stress realization. Our results indicate that Polish learners tend to stress the word-initial syllable rather than the penult, typical of their native language. We have also observed a generally large, though smaller in more proficient learners, discrepancy between metacompetence and performance.</jats:p>

In-Service Primary School Teachers’ Account of Phonetically Difficult Words in English as a Foreign Language

“…In the wake of the studies conducted by Szpyra-Kozłowska (2011, 2012), Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017) investigate how word stress impacts upon the level of pronunciation difficulties experienced by Polish L1 EFL learners. Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017) argue that explicit instruction in the teaching and learning of word stress in English involves the "focus on individual vocabulary items" (Porzuczek and Rojczyk 2017: 315) that might appear problematic to pronounce by the learners. By means of using a list of PDWs (e.g., surface, Japan, success, industry, etc.…”

“…By means of using a list of PDWs (e.g., surface, Japan, success, industry, etc. ), Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017) examine the learners' strategies of word stress realisation. The results of their study suggest that the learners' stress identification in PDWs "does not form a predictable pattern, suggesting that Polish learners often ignore or do not recognize word stress as an intrinsic lexical property" (Porzuczek and Rojczyk 2017: 322).…”

“…Similarly to Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017), Parashchuk (2017) seeks to establish how stress is associated with PDWs in oral discourse of adult EFL students. The study conducted by Parashchuk (2017) involves a group of preservice EFL teachers whose L1 is Ukrainian.…”

“…Whereas Parashchuk (2017), as well as Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017), prioritise word stress in relation to PDWs, the studies conducted by Nowacka (2016) and Metruk (2018), respectively, explore the relationship between PDWs and segmentals/suprasegmentals. Specifically, Nowacka (2016) employs a list of 60 PDWs in order to explore the occurrence of local and global errors in their production and recognition.…”

“…Whereas oral communication is thought of as a difficult skill to acquire by the majority of EFL learners (Zhang 2009), PDWs appear to exacerbate the process of acquisition of this skill. In this regard, it seems pertinent to mention the argument made by Porzuczek and Rojczyk (2017), who suggest that "difficult words" appear to be more difficult for less proficient learners" (Porzuczek and Rojczyk 2017: 321). Extending this suggestion further, I argue that PDWs pose a complex problem to young EFL learners, in particular, to primary school EFL learners.…”