Abstract:
The present study investigates teachers’ perceptions to word stress and practices in
teaching word stress at the secondary school level. It is based on the hypothesis that if the
secondary school teachers are aware of the importance of word stress and have positive
perceptions of it, they would teach it more effectively. In order to achieve the
aforementioned aim, the research tool opted for is a questionnaire for teachers. A
questionnaire was administered to 25 first year secondary school teachers from 7
secondary schools, District of Jjijel. The results revealed that the teachers are highly aware
of the importance of word stress and have positive perceptions of it, but they do not teach it
effectively. Therefore, the research findings provided answers to the research questions
and partially confirmed the hypothesis of the present research work: the secondary school
teachers are aware of the importance of word stress and have positive perceptions of it. The
results obtained revealed that most of secondary school teachers are interested in teaching
word stress as they consider it useful for their students, also most of them explain the
importance of word stress in their lessons. Concerning the teachers’ perceptions of their
students’ learning of word stress, most of their students found it difficult. According to
teachers’ practices, some practices are effective and some others are not; as it is shown in
the findings, the majority of the teachers do not use any varieties of strategies to mark the
stress placement. Also they focused on both perceptions and production when teaching
word stress. Another effective practice of the teachers that most of them do not rely solely
on the pronunciation materials included in the text book, while the ineffective practices
include the medium used when teaching word stress because the results obtained reveal
that the sole medium used by majority of the teachers is their own voice. The results also
demonstrate that the teachers teach word stress only when it is included in a pronunciation
task. Based on those findings, some pedagogical recommendations are suggested.
