Stress Processing Sensitivity in Reading Korean and English Words

The present study explored the sensitivity to stress patterns of sixty-four ninthgraders learning to speak and read in Korean as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2) concurrently. Students’ productive stress processing abilities were assessed in reading Korean real words, English unfamiliar real words, and English pseudowords. Results unveiled that the Korean-speaking English language learners (ELLs) performed differently between Korean and English in terms of number of syllables and stress placement within a syllable structure. More specifically, their stress processing performances between the two languages clearly differed when the number of syllables increases and their stress assignment differences across the two languages were much larger on dissimilar stress patterns than similar ones. These findings suggest that unfamiliar L2specific prosodic information such as stress may present additional challenges to L2 learners, especially when their L1 is not stress-based.