This article addresses the issue of teaching pronunciation in English as a second language (ESL) classes by specifically looking at the impact of teaching lexical stress rules and tendencies on learners' stress placement performance. Sixteen rules in the form of interactive worksheets were taught in three ESL classes at pre-intermediate, intermediate, and upper intermediate levels (N = 38). The rules were taught and reviewed during 9 weeks, each taking approximately 25 minutes of class time. They dealt with four areas: word categories, compound nouns, verb-noun pairs, and suffixes. The participants recorded a list of carefully chosen 100 words two times, once before and once after the teaching of the rules. The results show a statistically significant reduction of mean error percentage from 33.8% to 18.3%, with an effect size (Cohen's d) of 1.67. The implications of this research are twofold. On the one hand, it is evidence for the successful teaching of suprasegmentals and in particular lexical stress rules in ESL classes, and on the other, it contains a methodology and a sample lesson plan for teaching such rules (see Appendix A). The article thus argues for the inclusion of English lexical stress prediction rules in the ESL pronunciation curriculum to enhance learners' overall intelligibility.

中文翻译：

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英语压力教学：案例研究

本文通过专门研究教学词汇重音规则和趋势对学习者重音放置表现的影响，解决了在英语作为第二语言 (ESL) 课程中教授发音的问题。在初级、中级和高级中级 (N = 38) 的三个 ESL 课程中教授了交互式工作表形式的 16 条规则。这些规则在 9 周内教授和复习，每次大约需要 25 分钟的课堂时间。他们涉及四个方面：词类、复合名词、动名词对和后缀。参与者记录了两次精心挑选的 100 个单词的列表，一次是在讲授规则之前，一次是在讲授规则之后。结果显示平均误差百分比从 33.8% 到 18.3% 有统计学意义的显着降低，影响大小 (Cohen' 标准差）为 1.67。这项研究的意义是双重的。一方面，它是在 ESL 课程中成功教授超句段特别是词汇重音规则的证据，另一方面，它包含教授此类规则的方法和示例课程计划（参见附录 A）。因此，本文主张在 ESL 发音课程中加入英语词汇重音预测规则，以提高学习者的整体可理解性。