English stress teaching and learning in Taiwan 林郁瑩 MA0C0104

Introduction To explore the current English stress learning and teaching in Taiwan and to examine the relationship with high and low achievers on the performances on cognition and production.

Why? To pass the oral exam like GEPT, the examinees have to speak the accurate and fluent words and sentences, which have closely relations with English stress. The reason is that many colleges and offices ask their students or applicants to have the qualification of demanded level.

Literature Review Jones (1960) referred to English stress as “the degree of force used in producing a syllable,” adding that “stressed syllables are more prominent than unstressed syllables”. Scholars like Gimson (1980), Knowles (1987), Brown (1991), and Roach (1991) all agreed that: pitch, loudness, length, and vowel quality are the important factors to emphasize the placement of the stress.

Motivation Since stress is the key to communication, the research to examine why it is paid less attention will be a necessary. The researcher find that in Taiwan we are in the test-oriented learning environment. Most of tests are written tests; therefore, it will take the educators more time to stress the importance of grammar practice or sentences making and translation.

Research Questions What are the current English stress teaching and learning in Taiwan? Do students’ Father’s and Mother’s educational backgrounds have the impacts on the outcomes of the students’ cognition and production? On average, to what extent the learning years have the influences on the results of the students’ performances on the cognition and production? What are the relationships between boys’ and girls’ performances on cognition and production?

What are the current English stress teaching and learning in Taiwan? Teaching the pronunciation of sentences, it includes intonation, rhythm, linking and so on. Both low and high achievers think that the English stress is hard to learn. Three major factors to affect the outcome of stress learning. Motivation, interests, and good model to follow.

Do students’ Father’s and Mother’s educational backgrounds have the impacts on the outcomes of the students’ cognition and production? According to the data from the thesis, the data shows that Father’s and Mother’s educational backgrounds don’t play important roles in affecting student’s performances on English stress learning.

On average, to what extent the learning years have the influences on the results of the students’ performances on the cognition and production? There is no related rising mean score with the increase of learning year. There is no significant difference related to learning year and student’s performance on cognition. There is no stable increase from students who have learned English for 4 years to students who have learned English for 15 years. There is no significant clue to the performances on cognition and production.

What are the relationships between boys’ and girls’ performances on cognition and production? t-test is used for this question. According to the table shown in the thesis, it revealed that males and females have no significant difference on performance of cognition. The number of boys and girls need to be balanced. Learning should be a process of participation.

Methodology It is composed of four major parts: The subjects who are involved in this research ‚The instruments that are designed and adopted by the researcher ƒThe study procedures that are undertaken „The measures applied for analyzing the data.

Participant Teachers’ questionnaires are answered by 30 English teachers in NSSH. It takes about 20 minutes to answer all questions. 98 students in the third year in Nan Shan High School are recruited as subjects. It takes about 25 minutes to finish the questionnaire (5 minutes to instruct the questionnaire and takes another 15 minutes to answer the questionnaires).

98 students, Level 13 and Level 12—high achievers and Level 3 and Level 4—low achievers in Nan Shan High School, are selected as subjects 98 students from four classes answer the questionnaire about their attitude toward English stress learning All English teachers in Nan Shan High School answer the questionnaire about their attitude toward the English stress learning and teaching experience All the questionnaires including students’ and teachers’ are collected and analyzed.

The oral text is constructed and students record the oral reading materials during the class time. All the marking and recording data are corrected, analyzed and compared. The marking text is constructed and answered in class. The statistical results are discussed

Instruments There are three primary instruments are used, including (1) two questionnaires on both teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward English stress teaching and learning (2) a cognition test: marking the placement of the words and sentences (3) a production test: the oral reading text intended for obtaining the estimate of students’ performance on stress patterns.