Word stress, or lexical stress, is the emphasis given to a particular syllable of a
word (Underhill, 1994). It is marked by vowel duration, loudness, and / or pitch height
(Field, 2004; Ladefoged, 2005). Kreidler (2004) has said that “stress is a property of a
word” (p. 70). For example, the word paper has the stress on the first syllable whereas
the word review has the stress on the second syllable. Word stress is particularly
important in speech processing (Brown, 1990; Field, 2004). In order to identify words,
native speakers of English or competent listeners rely on word stress patterns. Learners