Design of the study

The basic research design to be used in this research is getting participants

perform both production and perception tasks related to stress assignment. Prior

to the tasks, participants will be grouped into three proficiency levels on the

basis of a cloze (i.e., fill-in-the blank) test and a read-aloud task. The cloze test

(Brown, 1980) aims to assess their morphosyntactic, lexical, and discourse

competence while the read-aloud task is provided as a measure of their

phonological competence.

Research Instruments

After a short break on the same day, the perception task will be administered

to participants in the three groups. The participants will listen to a native

speaker pronounce each of the words twice from a tape This task also consists

of two parts: one in which a list of word are read aloud, and a second in which

the target words appear in the context of a sentence. The participants’ task is to

place a mark on the syllable they perceive to be stressed the most in each of the

target words. This will be repeated in the sentence-focus task. Before taking the
test, all participants will undergo a training session to ensure that they are able

to mark the stress consistently. In fact, the subjects will be given a sheet of

paper on which is written (these instructions will be read to the subject):

The following 35 words will be read for you on a tape recorder.

Please place a mark above the syllable you perceive to be stressed the

most. For example, you would hear and read:

banana

And you would mark:

ban᷅ana

The training continues until the subject get three in a row correct, and then the

subject will be instructed:

Now listen to the following 35 words, and place a mark above the

syllabic you perceive to be stressed most:

aroma

agenda

etc.

This, too, is repeated in the sentence-focus task. The participant will be given a

sheet of paper on which is written:

 The following 35 sentences will be read to you on a tape recorder.

Please place a mark above the syllable in the underlined word that

you perceive to be stressed the most. For example, you will hear

and read:

I think that monkey wants a banana.

And you would mark:

I think that monkey wants a ban᷅ana.

Training continues until the participant got three in a row correct and then the

participant will be instructed:

Now listen to the following 35 sentences on the tape recorder.

Place a mark above the syllable in the underlined word that you

perceive to be stressed the most.

The thing I love about coffee is the aroma.

We can’t talk about that, it’s not on the agenda.

etc.

The perception task is conducted second in order not to bias the production data

in any way.
Later, a native English-speaking judge phonetically transcribes the participant’s

production of the target words including where the subject placed the stress.

Inter-rater reliability is ensured by having a second judge ( an experienced

second –language teacher) score 10 of the production tests. The scoring

procedure is thus validated.

Data analysis
This paucity of research on the acquisition of L2 suprasegmentals is striking

given the importance of suprasegmentals in language learning and use. For

example, it has been shown that explicit instruction focusing on

suprasegmentals, more so than segmental training, leads to improvements in

spontaneous L2 speech (Derwing et al., 1998). Suprasegmentals have also been

found to determine listener judgments of comprehensibility and accentedness in

L2 speech (Munro & Derwing, 1998). The scarcity of research on the

acquisition of L2 suprasegmentals is even more striking because there are

virtually no studies on L2 suprasegmental learning by child L2 learners (see

Guion, 2005; Guion, Harada, & Clark, 2004, for rare exceptions). The goal of

the present study is to fill this gap by offering an investigation of child L2

learners’ acquisition of five suprasegmentals

Working within the framework of metrical phonology, Mairs (1989) set out to
identify and examine