The Effectiveness Of Shadowing Practice On English Stress Learning For Chinese EFL Learners

Nowadays,mastering English pronunciation is a significant prerequisite to having a good command of English.Furthermore,it is commonly accepted that suprasegmental features play a vital role in pronunciation learning.Specifically,word stress is vital in deciding the profiles of words and phrases in the theories of metrical phonology,and sentence stress can influence speakers’ intelligibility and comprehensibility.Therefore,an effective method for improving learners’ learning of English stress is very important.As an instruction method,shadowing practice is wellgrounded in its solid theoretical basis and sufficient empirical evidence in listening and speaking.Its effectiveness deserves to be examined to shed light on instruction in English stress and pronunciation teaching in general.The primary purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of an instruction approach,shadowing practice,to improve EFL learners’ learning of English stress.Therefore,36 freshmen majoring in English from a top-tier university were recruited,who were divided into an experimental group(n = 18)where shadowing practice was adopted and a control group(N = 18)for eight weeks.The learning effectiveness was assessed by students’ improvement in test scores from pretest to post-test that measured students’ performance in perception and production of English word stress and sentence stress.This study adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methods.Regarding the quantitative method,inter-rater reliability was analyzed through Kendall’s concordance coefficient to ensure the rating consistency of different raters.Also,the independent sample t-test was adopted to analyze the pre-test scores of the experimental group and the control group to ensure that there was no significant difference between the two groups.Two-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to examine the effectiveness of shadowing practice on English stress over time and the difference between the experimental group and the control group.Additionally,in terms of the qualitative method,open-ended questionnaires and interviews were adopted to probe into learners’ attitudes and perceptions towards shadowing practice on improving English stress learning and shed light on some other factors that affect learners’ perceptions and attitudes of the effectiveness of shadowing practice.Overall,students in both experimental and control groups significantly improved their performance in word stress perception and production and sentence stress production,which indicated the effectiveness of shadowing practice in improving word stress learning.More significantly,the experimental group outperformed the control group in sentence stress production,revealing the greater effectiveness of shadowing practice in English stress learning.By correlation analysis,it was shown that there was no correlation between practice time and the improvement of learners’ English stress.Moreover,according to the questionnaires and interviews,learners in the experimental group held a positive attitude towards shadowing practice,especially its significance in English stress learning.Meanwhile,the practice time,materials for shadowing practice,and speed of stimuli recordings were essential factors that influenced learners’ perceptions and attitudes toward the effectiveness of shadowing practice.This experiment is a pilot study investigating the effectiveness of shadowing on English stress.It offers a different perspective on teaching English stress and reveals that shadowing practice can serve as a conducive supplement to classroom pronunciation teaching,especially in terms of English stress,which may provide enlightenment for future research and instruction in pronunciation.