Journal of English Language Teaching

Teaching Accentual Patterns in English to Engineering Students

Leena Jadhav

Adjunct Faculty, College of Engineering Pune.

Amol Harale

Soft Skills Trainer

Keywords: ESL, Segmental Features, Suprasegmental Features, Accentual Patterns, Syllable, Stress

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Abstract

English pronunciation is considered to be one of the vital yet neglected areas in English language teaching. Kelly (1969) named it the ‘Cinderella’ of language teaching, as this

component has received less attention from ESL teachers compared to other components like grammar and vocabulary. An English teacher is expected to range from segmental to suprasegmental features of the English language while training their students in English pronunciation. That is, one first begins with the sound level, moves on to the word level, and gradually to the sentence level. If an English word has more than one syllable, all the syllables are not equally prominent. The syllable that is pronounced with more prominence is said to be accented. Furthermore, the stressed and unstressed syllables occur at regular intervals in English. The present paper deals with some of the techniques to teach accentual patterns in English to engineering students. The paper explores how the learners can be trained in using an appropriate accent, both at the word and sentence levels.

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