Stress Misassignment in the Pronunciation of English by Arabic-speaking Learners: Erratic Practice or Crosslinguistic Influence?

Abstract

The role of L1 interference in English stress assignment produced by Arabic-speaking EFL learners has received little research attention. This study aims to investigate whether faulty stress assignment by Arab learners is arbitrary or systematic. It also attempts to discover a linkage, if any, between Arabic phonotactic rules of stress placement and stress misplacement in English by Saudi learners. 120 learners from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University were randomly chosen from 3 different levels of English proficiency (lower-intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced); they were asked to pronounce 72 stimulus words that covered all morpho-syllabic word structures that the learners often mispronounced. The recordings were analysed using WASP spectrogram software and also by two independent raters. Results strongly indicated that crosslinguistic influence may have caused the learners to consistently a) place the stress on a specific syllable in a word even when this word has multiple stress assignments with a difference in meaning, b) stress the second item in a compound noun instead of the first, c) place the stress on the penultimate syllable of most polysyllabic words, d) place the stress on the second syllable of contracted negative auxiliary verbs , and e) misplace stress irrespective of their level of English proficiency.

An Investigation of Common Stress Placement Errors in English Word Roots and their Suffixed Derivatives by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

“…It is assumed that L1 influence is highly likely to be the cause of an erroneous stress pattern when it is systematic and almost exclusively uniform (Sadi et al, 2022;Sugahara, 2020). Later in this section, there will be a lavish and detailed discussion of this mispronunciation with frequent reference to Arabic stress assignment rules as explained by Watson (2011) that were briefly outlined earlier in this study in the section on 'Behavior of stress in Arabic', and which are named rules A, B and C in this study.…”

“…There is a shortage in the literature of research on the influence of suffixation on stress assignment by Arabic-speaking EFL learners. The closest study to this theme is perhaps Sadi et al (2022); the article investigates stress misassignment by Arabic-speaking EFL learners in monosyllabic vs polysyllabic words, simple vs compound words, and contracted vs non-contracted auxiliary verbs. The present study specifically addresses the issue of stress placement in suffixed and non-suffixed words.…”

Influence of first language on English word stress assignment by bahdini Kurdish learners of English

“…In free stressed languages including Russian, English and German, the stress is variable, i.e., its position is not predictable; it falls on different parts of the words depending on the word itself. Thus, stress placement needs to be memorized as there are no certain rules and patterns for placing it (Reetz & Jongman, 2009;Zsiga, 2013). In terms of functions, the stress has generally different functions in different languages.…”