EFFECTS OF SYLLABLE STRUCTURES ON THE PERCEPTION OF L2 ENGLISH LEXICAL STRESS AMONG TEENAGE MANDARIN LISTENERS

This study explores the effects of syllable structures on the perception of L2 English lexical stress among Chinese junior ELF learners.Specifically,it focuses on to what extent syllable numbers and syllable patterns differentiate the subjects’perception of target English lexical stress.The subjects were 93 junior middle-school students from two natural classes in Grade 7.The target lexical stress was the primarily stress placed on the 1;and 2;syllables respectively,which were embedded in two kinds of carrier words(nonsense&real English words)with three types of syllabic patterns(CVC.V,CVC.VC&CVC.CVC).The subjects first listened to the stimuli read by a British RP phonetician in falling tone and then did the perception tests in the pen-and-paper manner.Their correct perception ratios(CPRs)of the target English lexical stress were calculated and compared according to syllable numbers and syllable patterns.The results reveal that the CPRs of L2 English lexical stress in disyllabic words significantly outperformed those in trisyllabic words,and that among the disyllabic words,the CPRs ranked top,second,and bottom with the disyllabic patterns of CVC.V,CVC.CVC,and CVC.VC,respectively.The findings provide considerable evidence for the impact of syllabic structures on teenage Mandarin listeners’perception of L2 English lexical stress.