USING SOME METHODS TO HELP STUDENTS MASTER ENGLISH WORD STRESS AT HIGH SCHOOL

When teaching vocabulary in the stage Pre - to the 11th non – major English students at High Schools I found out that word stress is very important and it also help students pronounce co

Index Page

PART ONE INTRODUCTION 2

I Reason for choosing the theme 2

II Tasks of the research 3

III Limitation of the research 3

IV Aims of the research 3

V Methods of the research 3

PART TWO SOLUTION 3

I Basis of theory 3

II Basis of practice 3

III Content 4

IV Methods used to encourage students’ word stress study 19

PART THREE RESULTS 21

PART FOUR CONCLUSIONS 22

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

I Reason for choosing the theme

Nowadays English has become an international language because it is widely used in many parts ofthe world In the tendency of integration of the global economy, English is one of the effectivecommunicative tools for everybody The role of English is considered to be very important in thefields of sports, tourism, economics, politics, science, culture, and education Especially, Vietnam’sofficial membership of WTO opened a new door for integrating into the world economy, and moreand more people want to learn English for communicating with foreign partners, tourism, studytours, etc

Thanks to the innovation of ways in teaching English, English lessons are taught with four skills(speaking, reading, listening, writing) and grammar in one unit Moreover, there exists three stages –Pre - while – post - teaching in one lesson This really helps students improve their skills beside thegrammar exercises to pass the exams

When teaching vocabulary in the stage Pre - to the 11th non – major English students at High Schools

I found out that word stress is very important and it also help students pronounce correctly Butstudents don’t usually pay attention to this part, maybe they find it confusing to understand and thereare many words belonging to the exceptional cases

Therefore I decided to carry out the small research to find out how to help the students understandthe word stress Based on the results of this research, some changes and improvements could beapplied in the lessons and the exams, and some appropriate strategies needed to be designed with thehope that students will work more effectively in a writing lesson Hopefully that the results of thisstudy would be shared with any colleagues who had the same problem or anyone who is interested inthis study

II – Tasks of the research

To implement research projects, I must perform the following tasks

1- Look at the documents in word stress

2- Prepare the lessons and teaching experiment carefully

3- Attend the colleagues’ lectures, exchange, learn from experience

4- Check and evaluate the results of all students’ understanding to adjust, complementsuitably.

III- Limitation of the research

English grade 11 in general education

IV- Aims of the research

From the theoretical and practical basis, I decided to do a topic called "Using some methods to helpstudents master English word stress" The purpose of this research is:

Firstly, it makes students aware of the importance of using correct English accent, which will helpthem to have a sense of stress in their communication skills

Secondly, it helps students speak English correctly, ensuring the standard of knowledge, thereby thesmall research helps students solve the question of sound knowledge in tests or tests and college.Thirdly, this research can help teachers teach foreign languages with a few small tips in practicingspeaking skills for students

V- Methods of the research

- Using the rule of word tress and learn the exceptional word stress to apply to pronounce exactly

- Materials

PART TWO: SOLUTION

I Basis of theory

- Students find it difficult to learn by heart word stress rigidly, so they easily forget them

- Too many rules to learn for word stress identification

- Students don’t often focus on this part

- This only accounts for a small rate in the exam mark

II Basis of practice

1 Advantages

English is a subject that has been made innovative leading in the high school The Ministry ofEducation and Training has developed plans to improve the quality of teaching and learning foreignlanguages throughout the country We can see English in particular and foreign languages in generalare focally interested and thrivied To renovate and improve the quality of learning foreign languagesneed more synchronous solutions that first need to innovate teaching methods and learning

English is currently taught in a communicative and learner-centered way In order to communicate inEnglish, students must use two listening and speaking skills well This involves a number of factors,

in which it is important to help students master the English word stress Proper pronunciation of

English words will make communication in English more convenient, avoid misunderstandings incommunication.

2 Disadvantages

Through surveys of many colleagues and students, and at the same time in teaching practice, I foundthat students when learning English at junior high school hardly learned about English word stress.Most teachers do not have the time or pay attention to instruct students about this problem Teachers,when correcting mistakes, only pay attention to the use of words, grammatical errors or incorrectpronunciation, not to stress Most students do not have the concept of accent stress whenpronouncing English

Students may know about stress when seeing the Glossary at the end of the textbook However,many students do not watch this part or watch it but only notice the meaning of the word withoutpaying attention to the pronunciation or stress of the word

Especially some teachers are not aware of the importance of correct English pronunciation incommunication, so they do not train to properly pronounce the syllables

III Content

I have tried combining the simplified tips for students and only mentioned what is basic In thisresearch, I give the easiest rules accompanying the example words in the specific lessons in the textbook 11,12 In order to instruct the students about the stress, I present the following steps

1 What is stress?

In Peter Roach's book "English phonetics and phonology", the stress of a word is pronouncedstronger than the others Stressed syllables have at least four distinct characteristics:

- They have greater loudness than in the rest of the syllables

- Longer lengths than in the rest

- Higher pitch than in the remaining sounds

The vowel of stressed sound has a quality that is different from that of the other vowels in the sameword Normally, the four elements usually appear together in a well-known accent However,sometimes only one or two factors also make a word stress The factors are not the same, in whichpitch and length are the two most important factors, making it easy for the listener to recognize thestress of a word The accented syllable is pronounced stronger than the other syllables, and thesyllable is almost prolonged

2 Why do you need to master the stress?

Stress is an integral part of English Understanding accent helps learners move closer to the ability touse English fluently, make the communication process more natural, avoid misunderstandings andcommunication errors.

In addition, for high school students, proficiency in correct phonics will also help them to correctlyaddress the questions about sound stress in tests, usual exams or University entrance exams…

3 How to learn stress?

Like all linguistic knowledge, stress also has its own rules Learners can buy books on stress andlearn the rules in them With fixed rules, learners only need to memorize and do many exercises.However, there are the exceptions Learners need to pay more attention to these exceptions

In addition, learners can learn the stress in a variety of ways: learning in the process ofcommunication, learning when listening to lecturers, learning to listen to programs broadcast inEnglish, or by looking up dictionaries And just practice and practice regularly to help people learnsuccessfully on the road to conquer language

4 Teacher’s improvement:

To help students know how to find the accent correctly is a difficult and diverse issue Not onlyrequire the students to focus, persevering, hard to accumulate knowledge, master rules but also toremember some irregular words during the training course to make a good experience Throughoutthe years of teaching, I have found that there are no published materials available, some of whichhave been sporadic in recent years Therefore, with the accumulation of practical experience,tracking the teaching progress, I would like to present some experiences as follows:

As we all know, in English a word with two or more syllables has a stress, but English does not have

a fixed rule as some other language Where is the stress of a word with many syllables? There arealso some words with the same syllables but the accents of them are different Those words in thecourse of study should be remembered In the actual teaching process, I also found out the basicrules are as follows:

a - Two syllable words:

1 Most two syllable nouns and adjectives have accent on the first syllable

Eg: weekend (n)/ˈwiːkend/ Exception:

seaside (n)/ˈsiːsaɪd/ success (n) /səkˈses/

village (n) /ˈvɪlɪdʒ/ award (n)/əˈwɔːrd/

famous (a)/ˈfeɪməs/ polite (a) /pəˈlaɪt/

modern (a)/ˈmɒdn/ advice (n) /ədˈvaɪs/

clever (a)/ˈklevə(r)/ machine (n) /məˈʃiːn/

mistake (n) /mɪˈsteɪk/

alone (a) /əˈloʊn/

2 Most two syllable verbs and prepositions have stress on the second syllable

Eg: arrange (v) /əˈreɪndʒ/

Throughout (prep) /θruːˈaʊtruːˈaʊt/

Progress /ˈprɑːɡres/ /ˈprəɡres/

b - 3 or more syllable words

+ Accent often falls into the third syllable from the end up

Eg: communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/

Eg: develop (v) /dɪˈveləp/

C – Words with the endings ade, ental, ese, esque, ette, ee, eer, entary, ique, oo, oon have stress

- Before /bɪ\fɔ:s/ Befriend /bɪˈfrend/

CO, COM, CON, COL, COR.

De, Di, Dis

- deliver /di\livə/

- divorce /dɪˈvɔːrs/

- disclose /dis\klouz/

EX, EC, EN, EU.

- expel /eks\pel/

- ecstasy /eks\təsi/

- mistake /mis\teik/

- misdeed /mis\did/

- Renew /ri\nju:/

- Reduce /ri\dju:s/

SUB, SUC, SUG, SUP, SUR.

- Trichina /tri\kainə/

- trichoma /Tri\komə/

- interchange /int\t∫eind3/

- interstate /int∂\steit/

- Ship, ity, ce, ness, th, al, ance, ing, ion, ment:

- ESS: (Eg: poet  poetess)

ier  to glaze  glazierant  to assist  assistant

a V + ent  to preside  president

al  to arrive  arrivalance  to perform  performance:

ing  tobuild  buildingion  to invent  invention ment  to move  movement ist: art  artist

ian: music  musician (politician/ physician…)

b N + Ful: hand  handful

Hood: child  childhood

Let: book  booklet

Ship: leader  leadership

ist: national  nationalist Ian: electric  electrician Ism: national  nationalism

c Adj + Ity: rapid  rapidity

Ce: important  importance

Different  difference Ness: quick  quickness

Th: true  truth

Suffixes of verbs:

en: Black(adj)  to blacken

a adj + Fy: Pure(adj)  to Purify

ize(s): modern(adj)to modernizeen: length(n)  to lengthen

b N + Fy: beauty (n)  to beautify

Ize/ise: standard(n)  to standarlize

Suffixes of adjectives:

en ern ish

teen able al, ar, ive, ic, ical

Ward some ese

en  woodenern  southern/ Northern…

like  manlike

ive: to posses  possessive (adj)

b V + ed: to learn  learned (adj)

ing: to surprise  surprising (adj)

Able: to perish:  perishable (adj)ish: black  blackish/ yellowish…

a) adj + ly: Slowly

b) adv + wards: upwards

E - Many rhetorical words have the Greek suffixes: - Archy, Archist, cracy, graphy, grapher, logy, logist, meter, metry, nomy, nomer, nomist, pathy, phony, phonist, their accent falls on the

Note: In a special case, one word consists of many rules, and we choose the last rule.

For example: electicity: in this word the rule "IC" and rule "ITY" The "ITY" at the end havepriority right so the accent is in syllable before “ITY”

Jackson /ˈdʒæksən/

Robert /'rɔbət/

Chaplin /ˈtʃɑːln/

G Numbers

+ Words with the ending “teen”, stress falls on this ending

Eg: Thirteen /ˌθruːˈaʊtɜːrˈtiːn/

Fourteen /ˌfɔːrˈtiːn/

Fifteen /ˌfɪfˈtiːn/

Sixteen /ˌsɪksˈtiːn/

+ Words with the ending “ty”, stress falls on the 1st syllable

Eg: Thirty /ˈθruːˈaʊtɜːrti/

+ Compound verbs: stress falls on the 2nd syllable

Eg: Understand /ˌʌndərˈstænd/, overflow /ˌoʊvərˈfloʊ/, outlive/ˌaʊtˈlɪv/

+ Compound adjectives

- Compound adjectives have form:

adj /adv + PP  comp adj

 stress falls on the 2nd syllable

Eg: bad-tempered /ˌbæd ˈtempərd/

Well-done /ˌwel ˈdʌn/

Well-dressed /ˌwel ˈdrest/

short-sighted /ˌʃɔːrt ˈsaɪtɪd/

old-fashioned /ˌoʊld ˈfæʃnd/

- Compound adjectives have form:

N /Ving + adj  Comp- adj

 stress falls on the 1st syllable

Eg: homesick /ˈhoʊmsɪk/, airsick /ˈersɪk/, lightning-fast /ˈlaɪtnifæst/

Exception: duty-free /ˌduːti ˈfriː/, Snow-white /ˌsnoʊ ˈwaɪt/

* Some tips for special practice

- A very important experience is that in the quiz, if all four A, B, C, D accents are dropped in thesame syllable, we choose the word containing the most numbers of syllables

For example: A luggage B civil C necessary D iceberg.

Answer key: C

- Using exclusive method

Eg: A equality B difficulty C Simplicity D discovery

Look at A and C with the ending "ity" as indicated above the accent falls on the front syllable of thisending For option D, its root is “cover” and prefix is "dis" and suffix is “y”, so the word stress isalso in syllable 2 Surely the answer chosen by the exclusion method is B (accent)

Answer key: B

- The option-group experience for finding the outgroup option

Eg: A probability B reason C technological D entertainment.

We see (A) with the ending "ity" and (C) with the ending “ical”, so the accents are on the 3rd rhyme.Option (B) is a 2 syllable noun, stress is on the 1st syllable Now option (D) “entertaiment” sure itsstress must belong to the group with A and C.

Answer key: B

Through analyzing situations presented through some illustrated examples above, to help them easy

to remember, easy to master knowledge when looking for accents I draw some general points asfollows:

1 See which words belong to which noun, adjective, or verb (from two or more syllables)

2 Observe the word structure (the original or the word is formed by the prefix or suffix for the twosyllables)

3 Understand the general principle of finding the accents of two syllables and rememberingexceptions

4 Understand the law of soundness for rhymes from three or more syllables

5 Note that prefixes and suffixes do not change the primary accents of the original word (prefixes /suffixes)

6 Understand some nouns, verbs with special accents (commonly used words)

7 Learn how to find accents for double words (noun, adjective, double verb)

8 In a rhyme word with many laws appearing, the accent mark must precede the last syllable

9 Words with the same accent, when choosing the answer, we also preferred to choose the mostsyllable words

10 Apply good method of exclusion, group to find the right accent

IV Methods used to encourage students’ word stress study

1 Method 1

When teaching new words, I always focus on the stress of the words by using stress mark for the

new words and asking students to write the transcript in their notebooks As students read the words,

I also notice the students’ pronunciation - if they are not pronounced that word correctly they willhave to read it again correctly after me

2 Method 2