A Study on the English Stress Placement of Chinese EFL Learners

The paper reports an experimental study on the learning of stress placement rules of Chinese EFL learners. The F0 slope of stress assignment rules in English by 30 Chinese EFL learners were compared with that of native speakers. The learners had an average of 5-minute instruction with a tenminute practice period. The stimulus words, sentences, and paragraph contrast the compound stress rule and nuclear stress rule in compound nouns and noun phrases such as the 'White House' and 'a white house.' The result indicates that the learners had an F0 drop for the compound nouns but an F0 rise for noun phrases. It is also observed that the learners showed a more characteristic F0 slope than the native speaker did. It is thus concluded that Chinese EFL learners easily learn stress assignment in English, which is realized as pitch.