Word stress plays an important role in intelligibility and deserves to be studied in all English classes – not just pronunciation classes – and by all students regardless of their general language proficiency levels. Teaching word stress can occur as part of any lesson provided that the teacher is empowered with the theoretical knowledge of word stress and the enthusiasm to teach it. Less proficient learners should be made aware of word stress whereas more experienced learners can better cope with learning rules associated with word stress. Of the rules discussed in this article, phonological similarity may be the best one to start with as early and late bilinguals pick this up well.
The teaching of new vocabulary and word stress are closely entwined. Several ways to teach word stress have been presented. Despite this, the studies in the review present little evidence to support their claims. There have not been any meta-analysis or randomised control trials investigating how students best learn word stress. Although a few cohort studies were found, they had low numbers of participants. Additionally, some of the techniques outlined date back over 30 years, and more recent studies, including those using CALL, are limited