Chapter One INTRODUCTION
1.1 Motivation of the Study
Against the background of learning English all over the country, the importance ofspoken English has become growingly prominent. Just like other languages, Englishdefinitely serves as a communication tool, which is its basic function and determinesthat second language learners should pay enough attention to how to use the language toachieve efficient communication. Good spoken English includes two aspects: segmentaland suprasegmental. The first aspect is directly associated with pronunciation. Learnersmust have a good command of the pronunciation of each segment, syllable and word.Celce-Murcia (1987, P. 188) claimed that no matter how good a non-native learner is ingrammar and lexis, this competence is likely to lead nowhere unless he/she acquires a“threshold level of pronunciation”, below which communication is simply no existent.Gimson (1989, P. 397) also pointed out that for a good command of any foreignlanguage, one is required to master 50%-90% of its grammar, 1% of its lexicon, butconcerning its phonetics, it has to be 100%. However, the other aspect, which is relatedto suprasegmental, should never be forgotten.Aside from segmental features, suprasegmental features, such as stress, intonationand rhythm are integral parts of spoken English. Stress serves as the base of intonationand is the soul of English rhythm. A major manifestation of English rhythm is therotating changes from stressed syllables to unstressed ones. However, Chinese is asyllable-timed language where each syllable receives equal stress. Therefore, such a bigdifference leads to a situation where native English speakers could not understandChinese EFL learners’ spoken English. A good example is Chinese accented English, akind of distorted spoken English, which deviates from English rhythmic pattern.Besides, when understanding communication contents, native speakers makepredications relying on accented lexis in utterances (Chen, 2017). If words carryingimportant information are not stressed or words carrying unimportant information arestressed, it will definitely leads to misunderstanding. Also, Roach (2017) pointed outthat the relationship between strong and weak syllables and the overall prosodiccharacteristics of words and sentences are essential to intelligibility. Incorrect accentplacement is the major cause of intelligibility problems for foreign learners, and istherefore a subject that needs to be treated very seriously.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
Due to its prominent importance of stress in the acquisition of English, a greatnumber of Chinese and foreign scholars and linguists have paid great attention to L2English stress produced by Chinese EFL learners. These studies can be mainlysummarized into two categories. The first type makes predications of potentialproblems occurring in EFL learners’ stress production through comparison betweenEnglish and Chinese stress in intonation (Chen, 2017; Dou, 2017; Huang & Yang, 1997;Li & Ma, 2017; Liang, 1996; Zhang, 2017). The second type studies stress assignmentof EFL learners through experimental research (Chen, 2017; Chu, 2017; Schack, 2017).These studies provide insights into L2 English stress. However, there are somelimitations in studies of Chinese EFL learners’ stress. Firstly, the majorty of the studiesfocused on lexical stress and sentential stress, leaving phrasal stress unstudied.Secondly, m，英语论文范文，英语论文 |
