Teaching Word Stress at First Secondary School Level: Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices

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.