This requires many factors, inwhich it is quite important to help students master word stress in English.. In addition, I also find that when the students speak English, most of them onl
Trang 11 Introduction
In the context of global integration today, English is an importantlanguage It is the key to help us access the quintessence, progress in culture,education, science, technology and many other fields of humanity Therefore, it
is a second language, a compulsory subject of many countries around the world
According to analysts' forecasts, by the end of this decade, more than one third
of the world's population will be engaged in learning English, This global need
to learn English has shown that English is extremely important and essential foreconomic and social development on a national level as well as for eachindividual in society
From that practical requirement, English has been included in themainstream curriculum of all academic levels in our country The ultimate goal
of teaching and learning English is that students can communicate in English
The ability to communicate shows on two aspects: receptive language (listeningand reading) and producing language (speaking and writing) So, what mustteachers and students do to achieve this goal? This requires many factors, inwhich it is quite important to help students master word stress in English Thecorrect pronunciation of English word stress will help communicate in Englishmore smoothly, avoid misunderstandings in communication
From the reality of teaching English for many years, I found thatknowledge of English word stress is being taught in secondary school programsonly in practical level, not explained Students only need to listen and repeat thenumber of given words correctly The content of English word stress is onlyintroduced in the part “Pronunciation- A closer look 1” of Unit 9, Unit 10 andUnit 12 of grade 7 Students are only allowed to listen to tapes on how to readword stress of some words and then repeat However, in exams, there are oftensome questions about stress Through studying the results of students' tests, Ifind that students often do not give the correct answers of the questions aboutword stress In addition, I also find that when the students speak English, most
of them only speak evenly and do not pay attention to the stress of words, whichreduces the effectiveness of using English
Some authors also share many good experiences and solutions to helpstudents learn word or sentence stress well, but those experiences are broughtfrom scientific research, mainly applied to excellent students, high schoolstudents and serve for graduation exam, college and university Very fewdocuments mention teaching word stress for middle school students,specifically, groups of general students
From the results above, I strongly launched an innovative experience
"Some measures to help grade 7 students at Canh Nang town secondary
school master English word stress” It is hoped that the measures, to some
extent, will contribute to improving the teaching and learning of English word stress in grade 7 at Canh Nang town secondary school in particular and English study in general
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Trang 21.2 Aims of the study:
For above mentioned reasons, the main aims of the study are as the following:
- Firstly, make students aware of the importance of using correct English stress; therebyhelp them have a sense of stress in training their communication skills
- Secondly, help students speak English correctly, ensure subject knowledge standards,thereby help students solve the questions about stress knowledge in exams
- Thirdly, this topic can help teachers of foreign languages have a few small suggestions inteaching speaking skills for students
1.3 Scope of the study
Stress is one important part of English pronunciation, which consists ofsentence stress and word stress However, due to both limited time andexperience, this study only focuses on the word stress and some measures tohelp grade 7 students at Canh Nang town secondary school master English wordstress Any attempt to study English word stress on other aspect is beyond thescope of this study
1.4 Methods of the study
- Discussing with other teachers
- Observing and drawing out experiences
2 Content 2.1 Theoretical bacground
The aim of this part is to review theoretical background which related toEnglish word stress This basic knowledge will be provided in order to helpstudents consolidate their knowledge and understand the issues deeper
2.1.1 Stress 2.1.1.1 The definition of tress
Stress is defined as using more muscular energy while articulating thewords.When a word or a syllable in word is produced louder, more lengthy, withhigher pitch or with more quality, it will be perceived as stressed Theprominence makes some syllables be perceived as stressed
E.g: - Important [im’pɔ:tənt] - Decision [di'siʒn]
2.1.1.2 Characteristics of stressed and unstressed words
English words can be made up of one, two or many syllables In all words
of two or more syllables, one syllable is more prominent, louder, or more noticeable than the other syllables in that word This strong syllable is stressed (accented), and the other weaker syllables are unstressed (unaccented) (Dauer:
1983)
Stressed syllables sound louder, are usually longer, and have clearer vowels
and stronger consonants In a word said in isolation, stressed syllables are higherpitched; in sentences, a pitch change (a change in melody from high to
Trang 3low or low to high) often occurs on stressed syllables.
Unstressed syllables sound softer, are usually shorter, and are frequently
reduced or centralized This means that the vowels tend to become / ə /, / I /, or /
ﮞ /, and the consonants are weaker The pitch does not change direction on unstressed syllables
2.1.1.3 Nature of stress
In English Phonetics and Phonology, Roach P (1983:72, 73) held theview that “all stressed syllables have one characteristic in common, and that iscalled “prominence” The stressed syllable of a word is recognized moreprominent than the rest syllables of the word Deciding what makes a syllablebecome more prominent than others, in his book, Peter Roach looked at four
different important factors They are loudness, length, pitch and vowel quality.
2.1.1.3.2 Length (duration or quantity)
Roach P in Phonetic and Phonology (1983: 163) defined that: “The
length of syllables has an important part to play in prominence If a word ispresented to English listeners, with no pitch variations but with vowels ofdifferent length, those vowels which have the greatest length will be judged as
“stressed” Therefore, vowels and diphthongs will always be associated withprominence, especially by a listener, however weakly stressed they may be anddespite the fact that a long vowel or diphthong in a relatively unstressed syllabledoes not have the same length as it will have in a stressed syllable A vowel in astressed syllable may in fact be longer than that in an adjacent stressed syllable,without depriving the latter of its prominence, e.g /æ/ and / ai / in ally, / ʌ /and / iə / in frontier” In other words, among others syllables with the samelength, if only one of them is lengthened intensively, there is quite a strongtendency for that syllable to be heard as stressed
Trang 4syllable with prominence It is closely related to the frequency of vibration ofthe vocal folds and to the musical notion of low- and high-pitched notes He alsoemphasized: “If one syllable of a nonsense word (e.g ba: ba: ba: ba) is said with
a pitch that is noticeably different from that of the others, this will have a strongtendency to produce the effect of prominence If all syllables are said with lowpitch except for one said with high pitch, then the high-pitch syllable will beheard as stressed and the others as unstressed”
2.1.1.3.4 Vowel quality
A syllable will be considered as a prominence if it includes a vowel thathas different quality from neighboring vowels (Roach P.1983:163) If anonsense word “ba:ba:ba:ba ” is changed as “ba:bi:ba:ba”, then the “ bi” syllablewill usually be heard as stressed
In short, a stressed syllable can be recognized thanks to the combination
of those above four factors, among which the strongest effect is produced bypitch and length respectively, and then, loudness and vowel quality
2.1.1.4 Placement of word stress
According to O‟Connor J.D (1967:91), within a sentence, there are two kinds of words known as content(lexical) words and function(or grammatical) words Content words are those that express independent meaning include:
Nouns, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives, question words and demonstratives, which are usually stressed
Function words are words that have little or meaning in themselves, butexpress grammatical relationships They include: Articles, prepositions,auxiliaries, pronouns, conjunctions, relative pronouns Function words are morelikely to be unstressed, although they may be exceptionally stressed if givenspecial attention In terms of syllables, content words are classified as mono-syllable, bi-syllable and multi-syllable words
English is a very inconsistent language when it comes to rules Since it islittered with exceptions, you should always keep in mind that there are nodefinite rules to English, but general rules and patterns that can be followed
First, only one syllable can be stressed in an English word regardless if it hastwo, three, or even four or more syllables:
- Two-Syllable Words
In most two-syllable nouns and adjectives, the stress comes in the first
syllable of the word
For most two-syllable verbs, the stress is in the second syllable.
Trang 5Rule: stress on second syllable Example
Photograph – PHOtograph (3 syllables, first one is stressed)Photography – phoTOgraphy (4 syllables, third to last one is stressed)Photographic – photoGRAPHic (4 syllables, second to last one isstressed)
2.1.2 Role of stress in language learning
Stress is an important aspect of pronunciation, which decides one’s communication ability The better one is good at stress patterns of English, the more
he understands native speakers Why exactly is correct word stress so important when
it comes to conversing in the English language? Here are some reasons:
• Word stress heavily affects the sounds of the vowels in a word Different word stress canmake a word sound completely different
• Native speakers rely on word stress to identify words Thus, incorrect word stresspatterns can lead to miscommunication between non-native speakers and native speakers
• Knowing the stress pattern of words will help students to learn and remember the correctpronunciation of words
• Knowing correct word stress will help students to improve their listening comprehensionskills
• Overall, the skill to stress words correctly will help ESL learners more to converse more confident in English and enjoy it!
While some languages have little or limited stress, English is a heavilystress-based language Unfortunately, the majority of ESL teachers and studentsignore the necessity to practice word stress Word stress is not something extrathat students should study if they have time It is an essential part of learningEnglish because it is a major component of the English language
2.2 The reality of teaching and learning English word stress in grade 7
Located in a mountainous district of Thanh Hoa province; therefore, thereare some factors that affect the process of teaching and learning English in the school as follows:
About the students: Living in mountainous area makes the studentsbecome less concerned and confident in learning than those from crowded andmore developed regions because they do not have accesses to modern devicessuch as computers or word processors Besides, their background knowledge ofEnglish and their proficiency of English are poor Thus, it is more challengingfor teachers to activate and motivate them to take part in the lesson, especially inthe oral practice because of their shyness That is why, it can be concluded thattheir English knowledge especially their phonetic abilities are still limited andtheir attitude towards learning word stress is also a matter to be considered
About the material: The course book used to teach the students are English 7
designed by the Ministry of Education and Training and published by
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Trang 6Teachers, when correcting mistakes for students, only pay attention to wordusage, grammatical errors or incorrect pronunciation errors, not correct stresserrors Most students have no concept of stress in English pronunciation.
Students can learn about stress by looking at the glossary section at the end of atextbook However, many students do not watch this part or watch but only payattention to the meaning of the word without paying attention to thepronunciation or stress of the word
About facilities: There is not any modern equipment such as laboratory
or high classed rooms, which makes it difficult for the teachers and students toimprove English teaching and learning
Before doing the topic, I have done two surveys on students'understanding of stress and the current situation of teaching stress:
- The first survey: is a survey on students' ability to use English stress in grades 7A
and 7B at Canh Nang town secondary school I have given each student a five-question English stress
questionnaire and asked them to do it within 5 minutes The words on the questionnaire were selected
from unit 1 of the 7th grade English program when students finished this lesson The questionnaire is as
follows:
Choose the word whose stress pattern is different from that of the rest.
The results of each class are as follows (with percentages attached):
Trang 7From the above results, it can be seen that only about 37% of students
achieve the average or above with knowledge of stress and about 15% of
students do not correct any questions about stress After the students had
finished their answers, I continued to ask some students to pronounce words on
the ballot at random As a result, most of the children did not pronounce the
word stress correctly, even if they answered all 5 questions on the questionnaire
correctly Thus, it can be seen that students' knowledge of stress is relatively
weak Even those who understand the theory are weak in practice
- The second survey:
I have done a survey on the teaching situation of English language stress
knowledge of English teachers at 3 secondary schools at Canh Nang town After
attending some lessons and through interviews, I noticed that teachers have
mentioned stressing when teaching new words, but not often In the part
“Pronunciation- A closer look 1” of the lessons Unit 9, Unit 10 and Unit 12 of
grade 7, teachers only let students repeat words in the textbook, without any
additional exercises or explanations about stress
From the above situation, I have taken some measures to improve the
ability of students to use English stress in grade 7 The measures are divided
into two parts: the first part includes measures taken during distributed English
lessons and the second part includes measures taken during English
extracurricular hours
2.3 Solution made to solve the problem
2.3.1 During English lessons:
2.3.1.1 Measure 1: Integrating word stress into the lessons.
I do not teach separate lessons on word stress Instead, I often integrate it
into their normal lessons The ideal time to focus students' attention on it is when
introducing vocabulary That is, I quickly and simply elicit the stress pattern of the
word from the students and mark it on the board I also guide students to use stress
patterns as another way to organize and sort their vocabulary
For example, in students’ vocabulary note-books they can have a section
for nouns as follows:
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Trang 9Word O o o O O o o Noun
2.3.1.2 Measure 2:
When speaking English in the class, I always pay attention to pronounceaccent and intonation of words correctly to guide and create habits for students
to listen English words correctly In order to do this, I always have to practice
my speaking skill properly in many ways such as: listening and practicingaccording to tape, using dictionary to look up words that I am not sure about,listening to broadcast programs in English on television or radio
2.3.1.3 Measure 3:
This is the measure used in the part “Pronunciation- A closer look 1” ofthe lessons Unit 9, Unit 10 and Unit 12 Because the time for teaching wordstress in each pronunciation period is only from 10 to 15 minutes, so there isonly enough time for students to listen to tapes and repeat the pronunciation ofwords Teachers don't have time to explain to students some general rulesregarding to word stress Therefore, students can only grasp the stress of words
in the textbook Before part “Pronunciation- A closer look 1” of the lessons Unit
9, Unit 10 and Unit 12, I ask students to preview the “Word stress” at home,divide the class into groups of 6 students and ask each group to find more wordswith similar stress patterns, write in the form of multiple-choice questions aboutstress in the sub-board first Each group prepares 3 questions
In class, I proceed to teach word stress as follows:
- Firstly, I let students listen to the tape once time to recognize word stress and then ask students to repeat the tape twice
- Secondly, I check the word stress positions to see if the students have mastered them
- Thirdly, tell students to listen to the part "Practise reading aloud the sentences" and call some students to read it again
- Finally, I organize groups to exchange sub-boards with each other, do the exercises on those sub-boards
2.3.1.4 Measure 4:
This is the most important measure of this topic based on the idiom
"Practice makes perfect" Before each class, I prepare two multiple-choicequestions about stress with the requirement “Choose the word whose stress isdifferently placed from the other words” The words chosen in these twoquestions are the words that will be used in that class These two questions can
be written in advance on the extra board, or written on an electronic lecture toshow on the projector At the end of each class, I spend from 30 seconds to 1minute for students answering the two questions and pronouncing the words inthe two questions The student who correctly answers and pronounces the wordstress will receive a reward point card
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Trang 10This card is used to add points for students to tests of 15 minutes, 1 period or semester tests in proportion:
+ 2 cards = 1 point for the 15-minute test
+ 4 cards = 1 point for the 45-minute test
+ 6 cards = 1 point for the semester test
This measure is administered in lessons of 12 units Thus, after eachlesson, students will master the stress of 8 words and after 72 lessons of 12units, students have been practicing stress with 576 words
When I take this measure, I find that students who want to answercorrectly and read correctly will have to listen more attentively At the sametime, the reward point card has the effect of stimulating students to pay attention
to study and actively volunteer to answer questions Furthermore, it also helpsstudents improve their scores in a legitimate way and helps teachers evaluatestudents more accurately
In addition to the measures taken during the formal teaching hours, I also conduct a number of activities during the English extracurricular
activity
2.3.2 During the English extracurricular activity:
To help students easily memorize and deepen their knowledge of Englishword stress, I organized an extracurricular activity for students in grade 7 with
the theme “English word stress" This event will be held at the end of the
second term, when the students have finished their semester exams Theextracurricular session is organized as follows:
2.3.2.1 Prepare:
- I divide the class into 3 groups, assign each group to prepare a part of knowledgerelated to stress and accompanying exercises The knowledge content that needs to be prepared includes:+ Stress in two-syllable words
+ Stress in three-syllable words
+ Stress in more than three-syllable words
- Students need to prepare content for presentation on Powerpoint for convenience
- I prepare some simple, easy-to-remember rules about word stress to give students
at the end of the session
- In addition, I prepare some small gifts to reward students
2.3.2.2 Perform:
The extracurricular session is divided into three parts: theory, exercises and games and done within 90 minutes
- The theory: I call the representatives of the groups to present the prepared
knowledge, the other groups listen and ask questions for the group that has just presented After each group has finished their session, I correct the errors if any and summarize
- Exercise part: Groups take turns to project their homework for other groups to do.The group with the fastest and most accurate answers will receive a reward
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Trang 11- Game part:
+ I divide the class into 4 teams to play with symbols A, B, C, and D
+ Prepare 4 chairs with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 These numbers correspond to the
stressed syllable position of the word
+ Let teams draw the order number to play Four teams stood in line, each team in turn sent a member to participate in the game
+ Members of the first team play a word with 2 or more syllables and members ofthe other teams quickly run to the seat with the number corresponding to the word stress position Theperson who reads the word and reads the word stress correctly and the person sitting in the correct seatwill leave the row
+ The member of the team with the next number read another word and remaining members of the teams continue to find the right seat to sit
The game continues until the team with all members removed from the row earliest becomes the winner and receives the prize
At the end of the game, I give the students a handout with some simple and easy to remember stress rules
The content of the handout is as follows:
MỘT SỐ QUY TẮC VỀ TRỌNG ÂM TIẾNG ANH
1 Với từ có 2 âm tiết:
- Trước tiên hãy xác định từ loại và nhớ rằng hầu hết tính từ và danh từ nhấn trọng âm ở
âm thứ nhất còn động từ nhấn ở âm thứ hai
Ví dụ: MUsic, CENtral, comPOSE, preFER
- Tuy nhiên, nếu động từ kết thúc bằng một trong các âm /∂ /, / i/ hoặc /∂u/ thì nhấn ở âm thứ nhất
Ví dụ: ENter, FInish, FOllow
- Chú ý các cặp danh từ và động từ như:
Verb: preSENT, exPORTNoun: PREsent, EXport
2 Với từ có 3 âm tiết:
- Nhấn vào âm thứ nhất nếu âm thứ hai và ba chứa nguyên âm ngắn với chỉ một hoặc không có phụ âm
Ví dụ: Everything, ANcestor, CInema, LIbrary
- Nhấn vào âm thứ hai nếu nó chứa nguyên âm dài hoặc nguyên âm đôi và âm thứ ba chứa nguyên âm ngắn hoặc âm /∂u/
Ví dụ: poTAto, deVElop, surRENder
- Nhấn vào âm thứ ba nếu nó chứa nguyên âm dài hoặc nguyên âm đôi
Ví dụ: guaranTEE, enterTAIN
3 Các từ có chứa hậu tố hoặc đuôi đều có quy tắc để tìm trọng âm nên cần học thuộc một số quy tắc sau:
a Nhấn trọng âm ngay trước các đuôi hoặc hậu tố sau:
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Trang 12- ia + phụ âm: meMOrial, influENtial, phySIcian
- io+ phụ âm: compeTItion, oPInion
- ient, ience: efFIcient, conVEnience
- nguyên âm + ous: mysTErious, couRAgeous
- ic, ical: CLASsical, enerGEtic
- ity, ify: uniVERsity, BEAUtify
- ive, itive, itude: desTRUCtive, inFInitive, ATtitude
- logy, graphy: biOlogy, geOgraphy
- ant, ent, ance, ence: CONstant, dePENdent, atTENdance, indePENdence
- ular, ure: REgular, adVENture
b Nhấn trọng âm cách các hậu tố hoặc đuôi sau một âm tiết tính từ cuối lên:
c Chú ý: khi tra từ cần tra luôn cả cách phát âm và trọng âm vì các quy tắc vẫn
có ngoại lệ và cần phải học thuộc lòng đồng thời luyện tập thường xuyên
Ví dụ: aRITHmetic, NAturalize, eleMENtary, TElevision…
Through the extracurricular session, I noticed that the students are veryconscious of preparing the assigned content and most of the content is correct,the teacher does not need to fix much In the homework, they solve relativelywell, proving that they have grasped the theory In the game, the childrenparticipated very enthusiastically and always found the right seat quickly
Trang 13APPLYING THE MEASURES IN TEACHING
UNIT 9: FESTIVALS AROUND THE WORLD
LESSON 2: A CLOSER LOOK 1
I OBJECTIVE: By the end of the lesson, Ss can use adverbial phrases
correctly and appropriately The lexical items related to the topic “Festivalsaround the world” Pronounce two-syllable words with correct stress in isolationand in context
1 Knowledge:
a Vocabulary: The lexical items related to the topic “films”
b Grammar: Ed and ing adjectives, connectors.
2 Skills: Practicing skills
3 Attitude: - Positive about “Festivals around the world”.
1 Teacher: book, planning, picture, laptop, projector
2 Students: books, notebooks III TEACHING METHODS: Communicative approach, group Ss and T’s
activities, play as a character, teaching methods with game, teaching methods byvisual, teaching methods by practising, discussion group, technical present…
- T uses some techniques to present celebratory (aj) mang tính kỷ niệm
- Checking the understanding by making carnival (n) ngày hội
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