PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

 

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ISSN 0128-7702

Home / Regular Issue / JSSH Vol. 32 (2) Jun. 2024 / JSSH-8950-2023

 

Predictability Effect of Arabic Stress Pattern in English Lexical Stress Production by Arab EFL Undergraduates

Samah Yaslam Saleh Baagbah and Paramaswari Jaganathan

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 32, Issue 2, June 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.32.2.09

Keywords: English lexical stress, L1 phonological system, PRAAT, stress pattern predictability, Yemeni EFL learners

Published on: 28 June 2024

The present study investigates the effect of Arabic lexical stress predictability in producing English lexical stress by Yemeni EFL undergraduates and native Hadhrami Arabic (HA) speakers. The study involved the participation of 69 Yemeni EFL undergraduates with two varying levels of English proficiency. Additionally, 10 American native speakers were included to evaluate the correct production of English stress patterns by the Yemeni EFL undergraduates. The authors adopt the Metrical Theory and the Stress Typology Model to underpin the grounds of this study. Data from the study were collected through a production experiment using individual recording sessions for each participant reading 84 English real and nonce words. The differences between stressed and unstressed syllables were measured using phonetic cues ratios, vowel duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (F0), analysed through PRAAT software. The findings suggest that the production of English lexical stress by Yemeni EFL undergraduates is influenced by HA. However, the predictability of the Arabic stress pattern does not always trigger errors in producing English lexical stress by Yemeni EFL undergraduates. Findings indicate that Yemeni EFL undergraduates are more attentive to vowel weight, especially when the ultimate syllable incorporates a tense vowel. It stands in contrast to the conventional approach of syllable structure, which places a more pronounced emphasis on instructing English vowels among Arab ELF learners as a result of Arabic dialectal variation.

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