Native Thai Speakers’ Acquisition of English Word Stress Patterns

Wayland, Ratree; Landfair, David; Li, Bin; Guion, Susan G.

doi:10.1007/s10936-006-9016-9

Cited by 50 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Summarising research on the acquisition of English stress patterns by Thai, Korean and Spanish learners of English, Wayland et al (2006) state that "Late learners of English may rely more heavily on word-by-word learning of stress patterns and are less likely to abstract generalities about stress placement by syllabic structure and lexical class". The results of the current study seem to suggest the opposite conclusion for BE learners of Japanese: the learners appear to be making generalisations about accent type according to number of mora, part of speech and presence or absence of a function word.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variability and systematicity in individual learners’ Japanese lexical accent

Taylor¹

2011

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variability and systematicity in individual learners’ Japanese lexical accent

Taylor¹

2011

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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“…Since pronunciation is a global construct which consists of segmental (e.g., consonant and vowels) and suprasegmental (e.g., stress, intonation, rhythm, rate, volume), over the past decade, a number of studies have variedly investigated the area of speaking skills, including speaking assessment (e.g., Chen, 2001;Li, 2003;Wang 2003), phonology language acquisition (e.g., Altmann, 2006;Waylan et al, 2006), problems of teaching and learning speaking skills (e.g., Goodwin, 2001;Lazaraton, 2001). Amongst these studies focusing on speaking skills, pronunciation is receiving more attention in many EFL classrooms since it is recognized that students should primarily acquire as a fundamental skill because it can effect accuracy and comprehension (Celce-Murcia et al, 2000; Derwing et al, 2006;Hahn, 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

Thai Learners’ English Pronunciation Competence: Lesson Learned from Word Stress Assignment

Khamkhien¹

2010

JLTR

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Abstract-English has been a lingua franca in various domains of communication such as international business, academic conferences, diplomacy, science and technology. As a result, the demands for English skills in all aspects are crucial in response to the importance of English and the impact of globalization. Despite the constant efforts in developing English education in Thailand, a number of studies have shown that the achievement of Thai learners was unsatisfactory. Given the role of English as an international language which is used in almost domain of communication, amongst several factors hindering the success of English language learning, English pronunciation of the Thai learners should be focused. This study has two principle objectives: 1) to examine Thai learners' knowledge with regard to word stress assignment; and 2) to determine possible factors affecting the Thai learners' pronunciation competence. To achieve these objectives, 90 Thai learners of English participated in this study. The test consisting of two parts: personal information profile, and 40 selected words systematically taken from two textbooks, was employed to identify these participants' pronunciation competence. The results showed that most of the participants' English pronunciation was somewhat limited. Gender was identified to be the most significant factor contributing to the participants' test scores, while faculty and years of studying English were not. In light of the results suggested by the three variables, pedagogical suggestions were offered to help improve teaching and learning English pronunciation in general, and in focusing on the importance of teaching word stress in particular. Index Terms-word stress assignment, Thai learners, English pronunciation I. INTRODUCTIONAlong with economic globalization, English has increasingly become the medium of communication around the world both in local and global contexts. The realization of importance of English highlights the necessity of every country to have its people become better equipped with English performance. Inevitably, this necessity is also applicable to Thailand. In response to the demands for English skills, the Thai government has made constant efforts to improve Thai learners' English performance throughout the history of English language teaching in Thailand (Kanoksilapatham, 2007) in order to improve Thai learners' competence in English, enabling them to obtain job opportunities, promotions or career advancement.With the rise in the number of English users, English language teaching professionals has increased worldwide. The importance of English has also sparked a growing interest in the teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL). In Thailand, to meet the demands of global economics and to cope with the growing local and national demands for English skills, new initiatives have been launched in all aspects of the Thai educational system, including curriculum, materials, facilities, and professional development for teachers. However, a number of studies (e...

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“…The other two participants had not taken any speaking test at the time of the experiment, but both of them had been in the U.S. for more than four years. Following Guion et al (2004) and Wayland et al (2006), a test was conducted to probe their ability to produce stress in real English words. The test items were taken from Guion et al, among which 18 words had regular stress patterns and 18 words irregular patterns (see Appendix A for stimuli).…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She found that late Korean bilinguals were not sensitive to both syllabic type and lexical category and attributed this to transfer in that Korean has phrase-level pitch rather than lexical stress. Wayland, Guion, Landfair, and Li's (2006) study of Thai-speaking learners showed that the subjects were sensitive to English syllabic type in stress placement, but they could not determine whether this is due to acquisition or transfer, given that Thai tonal placement is also related with syllable type. In a large cross-linguistic study, Altmann (2006) investigated Chinese, Japanese and Korean learners' placement of stress in nonce English words and found them to be non-nativelike.…”

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The Acquisition of English Lexical Stress by Chinese-speaking Learners: An OT Account

Yuan¹,

Cheng²

2017

ELT

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Lexical stress is an important contributor to foreign accent as well as intelligibility of second language (L2) speech. The present study intends to find out to what extent Chinese-speaking learners whose native language has less evident stress can acquire English lexical stress. A production test was administered to nine advanced Chinese learners of English and nine native English controls, who read aloud 12 types of nonce English nouns. The results showed that the Chinese participants were able to place stress correctly in two-syllable words and three-syllable words with a heavy penultimate syllable. However, irregularity was observed in three-syllable words with a light penultimate syllable, particularly H(eavy)L(ow)L(ow). The results are further interpreted in Optimality Theory. It is argued that the learners' interlanguage grammar is both negatively and positively influenced by their native language. The constraint only active in Chinese causes the interlanguage to be non-nativelike. By contrast, the shared active constraints facilitate learning. Moreover, the emergence of the constraints in the interlanguage grammar which are inactive in Chinese but active in English provides evidence for the learners' ability to restructure their interlanguage phonology.

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Native Thai Speakers’ Acquisition of English Word Stress Patterns

Cited by 50 publications

References 27 publications

Variability and systematicity in individual learners’ Japanese lexical accent

Variability and systematicity in individual learners’ Japanese lexical accent

Thai Learners’ English Pronunciation Competence: Lesson Learned from Word Stress Assignment

The Acquisition of English Lexical Stress by Chinese-speaking Learners: An OT Account

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