scholarly journals The Acquisition of English Word Stress by Mandarin EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 196
Author(s):  
Dan Liu
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
English Word ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Chinese College Students ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Syllabic Structure ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

Compared with the study of acquisition of syntax and morphology, there is a relative lack of research on the acquisition of phonology, the L2 acquisition of word stress in particular. This paper investigates the production of word stress by 70 Chinese college students in their reading aloud. Altogether 350 minutes’ recordings were collected and coded. The result shows that improper assignment of word stress most likely occurs in two-syllable words and three-syllable words and on the first syllable. The factors which account for these problems are learners’ insensitivity to syllabic structure of English words and lack of knowledge of rules on English word stress.

scholarly journals Instructional Effects of Syntactic Parsing on Chinese College Students’ EFL Reading Rates

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Xiaokan Chen ◽  
Hongmei Li ◽  
Min Gui
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Reading Rate ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Syntactic Parsing ◽  
Chinese College Students ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Experimental Group

 Foreign language reading serves as the fundamental channel for foreign language acquisition and for information gathering. However, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners are generally slow in their reading rates. A number of approaches have been proposed to improve reading rates of EFL learners, underpinned by learning theories. From an information processing perspective, building automaticity in lower-level processes is necessary to allow readers to allocate more cognitive resources for higher-level processes. Given the importance of reading rate and the scarcity of related research, the present study intends to explore the relationship between Chinese college students’ syntactic parsing ability and their EFL reading rates, and investigate the effects of syntactic parsing instruction on their EFL reading rates. A total of 87 freshmen from two intact classes participated in the present study. They were divided into an experimental group (43) and a control group (44). The experimental group received a 12-week instruction on syntactic parsing ability. A pretest-posttest design was employed to explore the participants’ development of syntactic parsing ability and their reading rates. After the training period, a semi-structured interview was conducted among 10 participants of the experimental to explore their attitudes towards the syntactic parsing ability instruction. Two major findings were revealed. First, there was a close relationship between syntactic parsing and reading rate. Second, syntactic parsing instruction may have positive effects on some students’ reading rates in the experimental group. Responses in the interview indicated that the participants held positive attitudes towards the syntactic parsing ability training.

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