Stress in English : Prosodic and Rhythmic Complexity for Arab Learners

Stress assignment in English is among the difficulties that Arab learners of English as a second language face in their learning of English, and it is responsible for hindering their L2 acquisition. The present study investigates the problems adult native speakers of Egyptian Arabic face in learning two-to-five syllable words, regarding English stress assignment, with special focus on compound words in English. The study identifies a continuum or a hierarchy of the difficulties that adult EA learners face in deciding the place of stress, with the aim of suggesting some corrective steps for avoiding these difficulties in the future. The study uses metrical phonology, specifically Dresher and Kaye's model (1990), as a theoretical framework. It is based on four tests. The students are divided into three groups to allow the researcher to see the differences between students with different degrees of instruction on English stress placement rules. The findings indicate that word-length is associated with low performance. In compound words, the phonological structures of stressed syllables which are different from that of EA lead to incorrect stress placement on the part of the students.