STRESS OUT OF STRESS: STRESSING UNACCENTED SYLLABLES’ DILEMMA

Grammatical knowledge for the proper use of English language is important but accent is rather more significant through which the learners could express their emotions and thoughts such as love, anger, apology, thanks, complaints, etc., intelligibly. This participatory investigative study has been conducted on 80 M.A English students, who studied a core course on “Phonetics & Phonology”, to find out what are the major phonological difficulties of advanced level students even after attending a specialized course on ‘Phonetics & Phonology’. The students had to take a text-based oral test before and after attending the offered course. Since the focus of the study was on the improper use of accented and unaccented syllables; a text comprising majority of two syllabic words (adjectives, nouns, and verbs) was used to find out whether students could properly make a distinction, while pronouncing, between adjectives or nouns and verbs. The results of the study (50 mispronounced words) show that a majority of the students is unable to distinguish verb from noun or adjective in the connected speech and appear to mix up verbs with adjectives or nouns. It may be due to over use of first language interference, lack of the application of phonological rules, less practice of reading phonetic script and irregular speaking practice of the target language in academic and social life. The study recommends that there should be tangible efforts by higher education institutions to introduce some courses on ‘Phonetics and Phonology’ at post graduate level to promote refined pronunciation with a focus on accent among the students.