In this project, we have identified a set of words that our participants have consistently mispronounced with incorrect placement of stress. Considering the proven positive effects of corpus on learning and teaching pronunciation based on our previous projects and other studies, we constructed a mini corpus specifically focusing on word stress. Due to technical limitations, this mini corpus only presents the words produced by the participants with an accuracy rate less than 50%. (For more raw data, you can access it via the link HERE.) In addition to the words extracted from the read-aloud task in this project, other problematic words elicited from the spontaneous speech in one of our learner corpora ‘The English Speech Corpus with Different Proficiency Level’ (developed by the same research team and funded by TDG) were also included. The words in this mini corpus are categorized based on the number of syllables, with recordings of both native speakers and our participants.
Word Type
Example
IPA
Recording of native speaker
Recording of learner
2-syllable word
charade
/ʃəˈrɑːd/
3-syllable word
dystrophy
/ˈdɪs.trə.fi/
ancestor
/ˈæn.ses.tər/
chapatti
/tʃəˈpæt.i/
importune
/ˌɪm.pɔːˈtʃuːn/
Faroese
/fɛərəʊˈiːz/
Long word
(>= 4 syllables)
extravagant
/ɪkˈstræv.ə.ɡənt/
impecunious
/ˌɪm.pəˈkjuː.ni.əs/
mother-in-law (n.)
/ˈmʌð.ə.rɪn.lɔː/
sugar-free (adj.)
/ˌʃʊɡ.əˈfriː/
Production practice with the AI-powered assessment tool
With the use of data from both native speakers and learners, we created an AI-powered assessment tool to help you check if your pronunciation of the target words has appropriate word stress. When practicing word stress, you just need to pay attention to the color bands as shown in the figure.
The color bands indicate the stress pattern you employed to pronounce the word. Each word has two classes with stressed syllable capitalized, one for correct stress pattern and one for incorrect. For the incorrect stress pattern, it is selected based on the production by the participants in this project. You may adjust your pronunciation accordingly. Hopefully, the instant feedback provided by the tool can help you learn more effectively.
(Please be noted that this tool may have some limitations. The major one is that this tool is an initial version tested with a limited amount of data, and as a result, the accuracy rate may not be quite high. We plan to iterate the tool with more data in the future to improve its accuracy.)
Now please click on the buttons below and try to pronounce the words under corresponding category.
charade
mature
subject
project
dystrophy
ancestor
chapatti
importune
Faroese
Japanese
extravagant
impecunious
storyline
sugar-free
(to be released soon*)
Useful web-based platforms with visualization
While you are practicing your pronunciation, you can also make use of other platforms except Praat – the professional one – to visualize your production. Here, we recommend two existing web-based platforms for your word stress practice: Ampitch and WASP2.
You may follow the instruction we provided by clicking HERE.
Production practice with GhatGPT-generated feedback
(to be further explored)
ChatGPT is becoming an increasingly popular tool in language education. And we are now exploring how to incorporate ChatGPT into teaching word stress. Here is a demo video that shows what can be generated by ChatGPT in terms of feedback on word stress.
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