Word-Stress – A Source of Unintelligibility in English

The present paper is concerned with English word-stress, a feature that is essential for efficient communication. The difficulty to assign this phonological aspect will be considered as well as the effect of its misplacement on comprehension. As an illustration, it will be shown how English word-stress differs from that of another stress-timed language, namely Arabic. Finally, emphasis will be placed on the need to teach this feature of English pronunciation.