Article published In:
Journal of Second Language PronunciationVol. 9:3 (2023) ► pp.302–311
Teaching contrastive stress to lower-proficiency learners
This article looks at the decisions behind teaching contrastive stress in a 2018 article by the author. The teaching of prosody can include areas like lexical stress, intonation, prominence, rhythm, etc., either in aggregate or by focusing on a specific feature, such as contrastive stress, the focus of this paper. Contrastive stress is often taught using written texts that require learners to understand the content of the texts as well as to identify the pronunciation issues in reading those texts aloud. The decisions made for this study were driven by the target learner population, low-intermediate learners of English, who were very much less likely to be able to carry out both of these tasks. As a result, the study was built around the use of pictures that could be used to compare and contrast without reading.
Keywords: contrastive stress, phonological prominence, new information, teaching pronunciation, prosody, suprasegmentals
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The pedagogy of teaching contrastive stress
- 3.The central pedagogical approach for our 2018 study
- 3.1Teaching approach and teachers
- 3.2Materials
- 4.Overall teaching plan
- 5.Evaluation
-
References
References (12)
Bolinger, D. (1972). Accent is predictable (if you're a mind-reader). Language,
48
(2), 633–644. 
Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J., & Wiebe, G. (1998). Evidence in favor of a broad framework for pronunciation instruction. Language Learning,
48
(3), 393–410.
Gilbert, J. (1978). Gadgets: Some non-verbal tools for teaching pronunciation. TESL Reporter,
11
1, 6–71, 13.
Gordon, J., Darcy, I., & Ewert, D. (2013). Pronunciation teaching and learning: Effects of explicit phonetic instruction in the L2 classroom. In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 4th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference. Aug. 2012. (pp. 194–206). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Hahn, L. D. (2004). Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL Quarterly,
38
(2), 201–223.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford University Press.
Levis, J. M., & Grant, L. (2003). Integrating pronunciation into ESL/EFL classrooms. TESOL Journal,
12
(2), 13–19.
Levis, J., & Muller Levis, G. (2018). Teaching high-value pronunciation features: Contrastive stress for intermediate learners. CATESOL Journal,
30
(1), 139–160.
Levis, J. M. & Silpachai, A. O. (2018). Prominence and information structure in pronunciation teaching materials. In J. Levis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 9th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching conference, ISSN 2380-9566, University of Utah, September, 2017 (pp. 216–229). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
McNerney, M., & Mendelsohn, D. (1992). Suprasegmentals in the pronunciation class: Setting priorities. In P. Avery & S. Ehrlich (eds.), Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford University Press.
Muller Levis, G. & Levis, J. (2012). Learning to produce contrastive focus: A study of advanced learners of English. In. J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.). Proceedings of the 3rd Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, Sept. 2011. (pp. 124–133). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Zhang, R., & Yuan, Z. M. (2020). Examining the effects of explicit pronunciation instruction on the development of L2 pronunciation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition,
42
(4), 905–918.