The Difficulties of Placing Stress on English Words as Encountered by EFL University Students

Abstract

This study has been carried out at Sudan University of Science & Technology, College of Languages, English Department. It considers the difficulties of placing stress on English words as encountered by EFL university students. The researcher has already observed that most of the students especially those who study English as a foreign language face difficulties while stressing English words. Therefore the main aim of this study is to investigate these difficulties. In order to find out the fact, the researcher adopted the descriptive, analytical method. The total number of the students who participated in the test is 50 students. They are 3rd year English language students at College of Languages/ English Department, in the academic year 2017. To collect the data needed the researcher has designed a test to examinethe specific samples that were chosen randomly by the researcher. After the exam was marked by the researcher and analyzed with statistical program labeled SPSS, the final findings revealed that: First, most of 3rd year EFL students are not capable to distinguish between the strong and weak syllables within a word with the percentage of 88%. Second, the result has also reflected the weakness of the student‟s knowledge regarding stress placement. This is the cause in words that only carry primary stress, as well as polysyllabic words which include affixes and therefore carry both primary and secondary stress, with the percentage of 72% and 90% respectively. Based on the final findings, the researcher recommends that English learners should pay attention to recognize the right pronunciation of each new word they hear. Also students should learn the rules of word stress, because that may help them to master it.