抄録
English word stress is contrastive; for example próduce is a noun meaning fruit and vegetables, and prodúce is a verb meaning “to manufacture.” Research has shown that accurate English word stress placement is vital to successful communication. Gallego (1990) reported that 64.6% of communication breakdowns between non-native teaching assistants and native undergraduate students occurred due to pronunciation errors, of which 35.8% were stress related. Despite the importance of word stress, Japanese learners of English do not typically receive pronunciation instruction and make frequent stress errors, especially when loanwords from English are accented differently in Japanese from the original English (e.g. English páttern vs. Japanese patáan). Because memorizing correct stress placements by rote is burdensome, it would certainly be ideal to learn them without explicit instruction or conscious memorization. We report on a preliminary study that examined the effects of a computer-based online word repetition exercise on the acquisition of English word stress, modelling after a previous study that demonstrated a significant beneficial effect of this type of exercise on the acquisition of Japanese word accentuation (Yoshida, 2010).
