【Abstract】 With the pace of globalization， English has been taught widely in China. It is undeniable that English language teaching and learning have made a great progress，however， it seems necessary to analyze the problems on English pronunciation of Chinese students and provide some feasible suggestions to help them make improvement.

【Keywords】Discussion;approacheshelping

【中圖分類號】 G640【文獻標識碼】 A【文章編號】 1005-1074(2009)04-0138-01

There are some typical pronunciation errors of Chinese learners whose mother tongue is mandarin on both segmental and suprasemental levels. All these errors may lead to the reduction of the intelligibility and the misunderstanding of listeners. The word-level stress is always confusing for them mainly due to different phonology between mandarin and English. In such a situation， how to pronounce the word stress correctly is regarded as an important area in teaching and learning English pronunciation. In this essay， I would like to have a further discussion focusing on problems encountering mandarin speakers in the area of English word stress.

1 Description of the difficulty on word stress in English for mandarin speakers

According to Fudge， the word stress means some syllables are picked out within a word and given priority in pronunciation (Fudge， 1984). In the multisyllabic words in English， there are always one or more than one stressed syllables. Stressed syllables are normally pronounced more loudly， forcefully and longer than the unstressed syllables (Yates， 2002a). Knowing word stress pattern is necessary for English learners.

Word stress might be produced spontaneously by native English speakers. However， it seems that sometimes mandarin speakers can not distinguish the stressed syllables from the unstressed ones. For example， for the word supermarket， mandarin speakers feel difficult to produce the stress on the first syllable / sju: /. There are two possible solutions being selected. One is to produce the four syllables with the same amount of stress. And the other one is to transfer the stress from the first syllable to the third / ma: /. These sorts of phenomena occur frequently in the utterances when mandarin speakers pronounce the multisyllabic English words.

2 Reasons for mandarin speakers having difficulties in locating the stress on the right syllable

There should be many factors contributing to the difficulties of mandarin speakers in pronouncing word stress in English.Firstly， most mandarin words are monosyllabic while the majority of English words are multisyllabic. There is a special monosyllabic structure in mandarin language (Liu Fung， 2000). Therefore， normally mandarin speakers only need to pronounce one syllable for a word in their mother tongue. On the other hand， as we know， there are numerous English words having more than one syllable.

Secondly， mandarin is a tonal language while English is a stress language. There are four different tones in mandarin and the intonation of a word indicates its meaning (Muthusamy Barnard， 1994). Consequently， mandarin speakers emphasize the differences of the four tones rather than word stress. Meanwhile， English as a stress language， it has different levels of stress including word stress， phrasal stress and sentences stress (Werner Keller， 1994). The suprasegmental features in this area of these two languages are obviously dissimilar. This difference also prevents mandarin speakers from producing the word stress correctly and easily.

3 Some approaches helping to improve the skills of placing the word stress correctly

Firstly， it is helpful to combine the bottom-up approach with the top-down approach.. Bottom-up approach in teaching pronunciation means teaching process moving on from articulation of single consonant and vowel to superasegmental features including intonation， linking， stress on lexical and syntactical level. Meanwhile， top-down approach emphasizes the communicative perspective of language teaching. With the guide of this approach， intonation pattern is taught first， and the segmental features will follow up later (Zemanova， 2007). Either of these two approaches has its valuable advantages.

In addition， teachers need to help the mandarin speaking students keep the awareness of their mistakes in the placing word stress. Some students may not realize that they have the errors on the word stress at all. It is necessary to point these mistakes out and do some analysis to help the student be aware of them. However， even though some students may know their weakness in word stress， they are often not fully aware of them when they talk in English in a real situation (Bai， 2003). In this case， it is useful to tape record their utterance and help them to re-examine their own pronunciation focusing on the problems of word stress.

Thirdly， it is useful to design varying activities to teach word stress specifically. There are many practical activities to highlight word stress and help students pronounce word stress correctly.

These activities include clapping hands， clicking， tapping， makingspecial gestures indicating the stress， underling or capitalizing the stressed syllable (Yates， 2002 b). In the teaching process， these activities are much more helpful than only asking the students to imitate the way teachers produce the word stress. There is an activity is to use dots or elastic band to show the stressed syllable. Students can be divided into several groups and given some cards with words on it. They can have discussion of the word stress first and then use the dots or elastic bands to demonstrate them in class. For example， for the word development， then can draw the dots like that development or indicate the comparison of strong syllable and weak syllable by the stretch of the elastic band. These activities are very visual and easily arouse students' interest to learn word stress.

4 Conclusion

In conclusion， there has been a great progress made in English teaching and learning in China recently. However， English learners from mandarin background experience some difficulties in English pronunciation. The incorrect placement of word stress is one of them. There should be many reasons for that phenomenon; however， the intervention of their mother tongue needs to be taken into consideration especially. The differences between the characteristics of mandarin phonology and those of English lead to the errors when mandarin speakers produce word stress in English.

Bibliography

[1] Fudge， E (1984) English World Stress George Allen Unwin Publishers Ltd:1

[2] Deterding， D Kirkpatrick，A. (2006). Emerging South-East Englsihes and Intelligibility. World Englishes， 25(3) 391-409

[3 Kris， H (2002) Interlanguage Phonology: Implications for a Remedial Pronunciation Course for Chinese Learners of English .Retrieved Sep23， 2007，

[4] Muthusamy Y Barnard， E (1994) Automatic Language Identication: A Review .Retrieved Sep 24，2007