Chapter intensive Reading Introduce the topic

CHAPTER 2 Procedure
2.1 Pre-reading task
Memory is one of the cognitive factors affecting second or foreign language learning. Cambridge Dictionary (2008) defines memory as "the ability to remember information, experiences and people." Richard and Schmitt (2002, p. 327) define it as “the mental capacity to store information, either for short or long periods”. Thus, it is clear that memory plays a big role in the process of storing information and retrieving it when needed. There are different forms of memory, three of which Leaver (2005, p.43) refers to according to the type of information it deals with: episodic memory, whose task is to remember events and situations, procedural memory, which relates to the recall of normal operations and semantic memory, whose task is to remember the main information or language lexical and structural forms and their meanings. These forms affect the process of language learning, particularly the semantic memory (the memory of the language). Thus, the learner needs the episodic memory to store learning situations, procedural memory to make the learning process automatic and semantic memory to remember the lexical and structural forms in order to build a knowledge base about language. Richard and Schmitt (2002) point out that there are two basic types of memory: (1) short-term memory which is responsible for storing information for a short time (up to 20 seconds) and where information is analyzed and interpreted. Working memory is another term for short-term memory, and refers to the active system of storing and using information temporarily for complex mental tasks such as learning, reasoning, and understanding. The opposition of the second primary stress to weak stress is also distinctive:
If, however, the second component of such compound nouns is considered to have weak stress, the distinctive function in such minimal pairs will be realized through the opposition of weak stress (in the `compound) and рrimary stress.
Word stress has an identificatory function because the stress patterns of words enable people to identify definite combinations of sounds as meaningful linguistic units. А distortion of the stress patterns may hamper understanding or produce а strange accent" [4; 57].
In the terms of our research work it is necessary to mention that "the accentual structure of English words is liable to instability due to the different origin of several layers in the Modern English word-stock. In Germanic languages the word stress originally fell on the initial syllable or the second syllable, the root syllable in the English words with prefixes. This tendency was called recessive. Most English words of Anglo-Saxon origin as well as the French borrowings (dated back to the 15th century) are subjected to this recessive tendency. Unrestricted recessive tendency is observed in the native English words having no prefix, e.g. mother, daughter, brother, swallow, etc., in assimilated French borrowings, e.g. reason, colour, restaurant. Restricted recessive tendency marks English words with prefixes, e.g. foresee, begin, withdraw, apart. A great number of words of Anglo-Saxon origin are monosyllabic or disyllabic, both notional words and form words. They tend to alternate in the flow of speech, e.g. 'don't be'lieve he's 'right.
The rhythm of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables gave birth to the rhythmical tendency in the present-day English which caused the appearance of the secondary stress in the multisyllabic French borrowings, e.g. revolution, organi'sation, assimilation, etc. It also explains the placement of primary stress on the third syllable from the end in three - and four-syllable words, e.g. 'cinema, 'situate, ar'ticulate. The interrelation of both the recessive and the rhythmical tendencies is traced in the process of accentual assimilation of the French borrowed word personal on the diachronic level, e.g. perso'nal -- 'perso'nal --'personal.
The appearance of the stress on the first syllable is the result of the recessive tendency and at the same time adaptation to the rhythmical tendency. The recessive tendency being stronger, the trisyllabic words like personal gained the only stress on the third syllable from the end, e.g. 'family, 'library, faculty, 'possible.
The accentual patterns of the words territory, dictionary, necessary in American English with the primary stress on the first syllable and the tertiary stress on the third are other examples illustrating the correlation of the recessive and rhythmical tendencies. Nowadays we witness a great number of variations in the accentual structure of English multisyllabic words as a result of the interrelation of the tendencies. The stress on the initial syllable is caused by the diachronical recessive tendency or the stress on the second syllable under the influence of the strong rhythmical tendency of the present day, e.g. 'hospitable -- ho'spitable, 'distribute -- dis'tribute, 'aristocrat -- a'ristocrat, 'laryngoscope -- la'ryngoscope.
A third tendency was traced in the instability of the accentual structure of English word stress, the retentive tendency: a derivative often retains the stress of the original or parent word, e.g. 'similar -- as'simitate, recom'mend -- recommend'dation". Here we recognized three main tendencies in English: retentive, rhythmical and recessive, which greatly affect the stress putting and in the end distinct pronunciation.
2.2 English accentuation tendencies
Word stress in English is free, but the "freedom" of its position is regulated by four accentuation tendencies as а result of its historical development. The first and the oldest of them is the recessive tendency, according to which, stress falls on the first syllable of а word which is generally the root syllable (`father, `sister, `husband, `water, `window,` ready, `clever), or on the second syllable in words which have а prefix of nо special meaning (bе`fore, bе`come, а`mong, for`get, mis`take).
The recessive tendency is characteristic of words of Germanic origin. It has also influenced many disyllabic and trisyllabic words borrowed from French, (`colour, `marriage, `excellent, `garage, `ballet, ab`stain, de`pend, ob`tain, sur`prise, re`main, pro`duce, com`pose). But: ma`сhinе, tech`nique, ро`lice.
The second tendency is the result of the mutual influence of Germanic and French accentual patterns. It is known as the rhythmic tendency, which manifests itself in stressing the third syllable from the end, (`family, `unity, in`tensity, ро`litical, а`bility, а`cademy, de`mocracy, in`finitive, com`parison, i`dentify).
Rhythmic stress is especially common for verbs with the suffixes -аtе, -fy,
-ize, (`situate, ar`ticulate, `qualify, `organize).
The accentuation of words ending in the suffix -ion with its variants -sion, -tion, -ation, is also rhythmical in its origin. Nowadays stress falls on the prefinal syllable, but it used to be on the third syllable from the end as the spelling still shows, (`nation, ос`casion, о`pinion).
Stress in three and four syllable words is called historically, or diachronically, rhythmical (`radical, ос`casion, i`dentity).
In words with more than four syllables we often find the secondary stress, which falls on the first or second syllable. It mау be called synchronically rhythmical stress (ad`mini`stration, re`sposi`bility, `popu`larity, `physic`ology, `indi`visible, etc).
In long polysyllabic words like `indi`visi`bility, `inter`conti`nental, `unfa`mili`arity, `inter`com`muni`cation, the stress on the 3rd (2nd) syllable from the end is diachronically rhythmical while the other two stresses are synchronically rhythmical. There has been а constant struggle between the recessive and the rhythmic tendencies, the outcome being threefold:
· an accentual compromise in words like enemy, cinema, recognize, diction(a)ry;
· аdefinite victory, in the great majority of words, for the rhythmic tendency, articulate, аcademy, аbility, еРхаmination, visibility, Ресоnomical;
· аdefinite victory for the recessive tendency in аsmall number of four- and five- syllable words, (advocacy, candidature, cannibalism, rationalism, characterize).
The third, retentive, tendency consists in the retention of the primary stress of the parent word in the derivatives, person - personal. More commonly, it is retained in the derivative as а secondary stress, possible - possibility, арpreciate - ар`рrесiation, nation - `nationality.
There is one more tendency in English that determines the place and the degree of word stress - the semantic tendency. It consists in stressing the most important elements of compound words. Compounds are words composed of two separable roots, which may be spelled as one word, with а hyphen, or two separate words. Compound nouns usually have а single stress on the first element, `birthday, `blacksmith, `apple tree, `suitcase, `booking оffiсе, `Newcastle, `music-hall, gui`tar player (but not `banjo player), `make up, etc.
I is worth noting that stress alone, unaccompanied by any other differentiating factor, does not seem to provide a very effective means of distinguishing words. And this is, probably, the reason why oppositions of this kind are neither regular nor productive.
Learning to lengthen stressed vowels and shorten/reduce unstressed vowels is challenging for most not English people practicing the language. Equally challenging is knowing which syllable to stress in a word. When learners are faced with a new word, they have never heard before, they base stress placement on many of the same strategies that native speakers do: analogy to phonologically similar words, stress patterns associated with classes of words or endings, or syllable structure.
Misplacement stress - stressing the wrong syllable - can make a word unrecognizable and completely disrupt the speaker's message. Not all errors involving misplaced stress are equally serious. Field (2005) reports that rightward misplacements of stress in two-syllabic words (e.g, stressing the second syllable of a woMAN) impaired intelligibility more than leftward misplacements (e.g., stressing the first syllable of ENjoy).
The rules for English stress placement are complex because English has borrowed many words from other languages, especially French, Latin, Spanish, and Greek, with different rules for assigning stress.
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in tone.[1][2] The terms stress and accent are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called pitch accent, and when produced through length alone, it is called quantitative accent.[3] When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called stress accent or dynamic accent; English uses what is called variable stress accent.
Since stress can be realised through a wide range of phonetic properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress solely phonetically.
The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress. Some languages have fixed stress, meaning that the stress on virtually any multisyllable word falls on a particular syllable, such as the penultimate (e.g. Polish) or the first (e.g. Finnish). Other languages, like English and Russian, have lexical stress, where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way but lexically encoded. Sometimes more than one level of stress, such as primary stress and secondary stress, may be identified.
Stress is not necessarily a feature of all languages: some, such as French and Mandarin, are sometimes analyzed as lacking lexical stress entirely.
The stress placed on words within sentences is called sentence stress or prosodic stress. That is one of the three components of prosody, along with rhythm and intonation. It includes phrasal stress (the default emphasis of certain words within phrases or clauses), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item, a word or part of a word, that is given particular focus).
There are various ways in which stress manifests itself in the speech stream, and they depend to some extent on which language is being spoken. Stressed syllables are often louder than non-stressed syllables, and they may have a higher or lower pitch. They may also sometimes be pronounced longer. There are sometimes differences in place or manner of articulation. In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or "neutral") articulation, and those in stressed syllables have a more peripheral articulation. Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes, the difference is minimal between the acoustic signals of stressed and those of unstressed syllables.
Those particular distinguishing features of stress, or types of prominence in which particular features are dominant, are sometimes referred to as particular types of accent: dynamic accent in the case of loudness, pitch accent in the case of pitch (although that term usually has more specialized meanings), quantitative accent in the case of length,[3] and qualitative accent in the case of differences in articulation. They can be compared to the various types of accent in music theory. In some contexts, the term stress or stress accent specifically means dynamic accent (or as an antonym to pitch accent in its various meanings).
A prominent syllable or word is said to be accented or tonic; the latter term does not imply that it carries phonemic tone. Other syllables or words are said to be unaccented or atonic. Syllables are frequently said to be in pretonic or post-tonic position, and certain phonological rules apply specifically to such positions. For instance, in American English, /t/ and /d/ are flapped in post-tonic position. Lever et al. (2005) further point out that there are a number of things that can go wrong in the storage, recall and reconstruction process. Some of the things that can go wrong are retrieval errors, lost data, and overwritten information. Retrieval errors, as stated by Harman and Asher (2001) , occur when the information loss over time results from storage capacity limitations due to a passive process of time-based decay and/or displacement of weakly activated information by more strongly activated information. Lost data occurs when the information is not settled in the permanent memory as it is not left long enough in the short-term memory, and then lost and cannot be retrieved. Overwritten information occurs when new information will erase the old information, and thus the old information became distorted. Long (1997, p.319) claims that second language learning is a process that occurs in a social context, and this learning process is a combination of cognitive processes and the social context."⁵