Effect Of Music Training On The Production And Perception Of English Lexical Stress By Chinese English Learners

In language acquisition,stress is one of the most prominent prosodic features of English.However,there are some difficulties in stress production among English learners in China,which lead to lower intelligibility in their communication in English.Many researchers have found that music training has a positive influence on second language acquisition,but there are few studies on the effect of music training on second language perception and production.Therefore,under the guidance of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences,this study aims to find whether music training will improve English stress perception and production among Chinese English learners without music background.A total of 30 college students are invited as participants,with 20 in the training group and 10 in the control group in the perception and production experiments.The empirical study is composed of English reading materials recording(30 unfamiliar English words and 80 disyllabic pseudowords)and a two-month music training(to distinguish pitch and loudness from different musical notes produced from various musical instruments).Major findings are as follows.(1)In stress perception,small variation is found in the accuracy of English stress perception after music training.Before music training,all participants’ ability in English lexical stress perception is generally at a high level(accuracy around 90-95%)with no significant individual differences,while after music training,stress perception accuracy in the training group is still around 90-95% with little variation.(2)In stress production,there is a significant influence of music training on the stress production by Chinese English learners.Specifically,after music training,the accuracy of the production of unfamiliar words in the training group has increased by 11.5% on average,compared with the control group which has little change.Besides,there is a significant improvement in the training group in distinguishing between stressed and unstressed syllables in disyllabic pseudowords.They mainly achieved it by increasing pitch(around 41%)and intensity(around 48%)in the stressed syllables.Such improvement is not found in the control group.In addition,little effect of music training on duration proportion in stressed syllables is found in this experiment.(3)Chinese English learners’ perception of music can positively transfer to the production of English lexical stress.After music training,participants in the training group with greater progress in music perception can produce stressed syllables in a more significant way by increasing pitch and intensity.Such findings provide further proof for the effect of music training on the production of English lexical stress,and propose a learning method for Chinese English learners to improve their English pronunciation.The set of music training which has been proved effective can be applied to language pronunciation classes,and teachers could use these musical methods to improve the efficiency of language teaching.