Teaching Prominence in L2 English
Dina Gadieva, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA
Introduction
English language teachers frequently encounter learners whose sounds are accurate but who are difficult to follow in extended discourse (i.e., longer stretches of spoken language that go beyond individual words or sentences, such as conversations, stories, presentations, etc.). These learners may sound flat or, conversely, overly emphatic, and generally less intelligible, even when their lexical and grammatical choices are appropriate. One common source of these problems is the wrong use of prominence, which can be defined as the way speakers underscore key words in speech, so listeners know what information is the most important. Although different words are used in the literature to describe this feature of speech (primary stress, prosodic emphasis, sentence stress), this article adopts the term “prominence”.
In English, prominence plays a crucial role in guiding listener attention and structuring discourse. When prominence aligns with listener expectations, communication flows smoothly. When it does not, even advanced learners can sound unclear or pragmatically off. Drawing on discourse intonation frameworks and classroom-based research, the article argues that teaching prominence can support learners’ pragmatic awareness and intelligibility. Additionally, practical instructional strategies are offered to help teachers integrate prominence-focused instruction into pronunciation teaching.
What is prominence, and why does it matter?
Prominence refers to the way speakers emphasize certain words or syllables within an utterance to signal importance or novelty. An utterance is something a speaker says, from a short phrase to a full sentence. In English, prominent words typically stand out through a combination of pitch movement, increased duration, and greater intensity (Levis & Silpachai, 2018).
Importantly, prominence is speaker-selected. In other words, speakers choose what to focus on based on their assumptions about shared knowledge, discourse goals, and communicative intent. Prominence serves as a central mechanism through which speakers mark new information, express contrast, and manage interpersonal meaning in discourse, such as contradicting a previous contribution or expressing enthusiastic agreement (Pickering, 2018). When prominence is used appropriately, listeners can easily track what matters most; however, when it is misplaced or absent, listeners may struggle to interpret the speaker’s intent.
For L2 learners, prominence poses a particular challenge because its use varies across languages. Many learners transfer stress patterns from their first language or rely on default lexical stress rather than discourse-driven emphasis. As a result, learners may overstress given information, fail to point out a contrast, or distribute emphasis evenly across an utterance. These patterns can obscure meaning and reduce communicative effectiveness.
Prominence and intelligibility
Research has shown that prominence plays a key role in intelligibility. For example, Hahn (2004) found that L2 speech with appropriately placed prominence was significantly more intelligible to native English listeners than speech with misplaced or missing stress, even when segmental accuracy was high (individual sounds were pronounced properly). Listeners also rated speakers with appropriate prominence as more confident and more competent.
Such findings bring out an important pedagogical point: intelligibility depends not only on producing the correct sounds, but also on signaling which sounds matter most. When prominence cues are absent or misleading, listeners have to make additional effort to identify the focus of the message. Over time, this increased processing load can lead to frustration or negative evaluations of the speaker. From a teaching perspective, this means that prominence should be treated as a high-value pronunciation feature. Addressing prominence can yield noticeable gains in intelligibility without requiring learners to achieve native-like pronunciation across all segments.
How prominence helps communicate meaning
Beyond intelligibility, prominence plays a central role in pragmatic meaning. Speakers use
prominence to express contrast, correction, emphasis, and stance. For example, stressing blue in “That’s a BLUE car” signals contrast with other colors. Stressing did in “I did lock the door” communicates insistence or correction. The good news, though, is that contrastive stress is one of the most teachable and impactful manifestations of prominence (Levis & Muller Levis, 2018). Research has shown that even short instructions can help learners use prominence to mark contrasts effectively, which makes their speech more understandable (Levis & Muller Levis, 2018).
It is also important to mention that many teaching materials oversimplify prominence by reducing it to a single rule about “new information” (Levis & Silpachai, 2018). In authentic discourse, however, prominence serves multiple functions and interacts with information structure, predictability, and context. Learners, therefore, need guidance not only on where prominence occurs, but also on whyspeakers choose to place it where they do.
Teaching prominence in discourse
Effective prominence instruction moves beyond isolated sentences and focuses on discourse-level meaning. One effective instructional principle is to begin with awareness-raising. Teachers can ask learners to listen to short spoken texts and identify which words sound emphasized and why. Rather than focusing immediately on technical labels, instructors can frame prominence in functional terms: What is the speaker highlighting? What is new or important here?
Visualization tools, such as Praat or SpeechViewer, can support this process by making prominence visible. For example, SpeechViewer provides real-time visual feedback by translating pitch, loudness, and duration into simple on-screen displays. As learners speak, they can immediately see changes in pitch height and movement, which makes prominent words visually salient and helps them adjust their production to better match target patterns. Visualization tools are especially useful for learners who struggle to perceive prominence differences through listening alone.
Classroom activities for teaching prominence
Listening and noticing tasks
Prominence instruction should begin with perception. Teachers can play a recording or read an utterance, such as “I was talking about TOMORROW, not today,” and ask learners to underline the word they perceive as most prominent while listening. A follow-up discussion can then focus on why that word was emphasized and what assumption the speaker is correcting. Teachers may ask guiding questions such as What information is being contrasted? or What might the listener have assumed?
Teachers can also present pairs of utterances with different prominence patterns and ask learners to interpret the difference in meaning. For example, learners may listen to “Their house is on the LEFT” and “THEIR house is on the left” and discuss how each version responds to a different conversational context. Emphasis on left signals contrast in location, while emphasis on their underlines contrast in ownership. These activities help learners understand that prominence is something speakers choose to guide listeners, not a fixed rule to memorize. Teachers can use examples of both serious and minor miscommunications to demonstrate why prominence matters in real-world communication (Hahn, 2004).
Contrastive stress practice
Contrastive stress tasks are particularly effective for developing pragmatic awareness in guided communication. Teachers can model sentences such as “No, I said TUESDAY, not Thursday,” and ask students to repeat them with emphasis on the contrasting word. At this stage, the goal is not perfection but helping students notice how stress changes meaning.
To move beyond repetition, teachers can use picture comparison activities, which are central to Levis and Muller Levis’s approach. Students are shown two similar pictures with a few clear differences (two objects with different colors/sizes/locations). Students take turns describing the differences using contrastive language, such as but, while, first/second, or one…the other. These tasks encourage students to stress the words that matter most for understanding.
Discourse-based speaking tasks
To encourage transfer, prominence practice should extend to short monologues or dialogues. For example, teachers can ask students to give a 30-40 second explanation of a familiar classroom topic (e.g., giving directions in the street, describing a recipe, sharing an opinion). Before speaking, students choose one key idea they want the listener to notice and highlight the word or phrase they want to be prominent. After the explanation, listeners briefly state what they understood as the main point, allowing speakers to evaluate whether their prominence choices successfully guided listener attention. When listeners report confusion or unexpected emphasis, speakers gain insight into how their prominence patterns are perceived.
Supporting transfer to spontaneous speech
One ongoing challenge in prominence instruction is transfer to spontaneous speech. Learners may perform well in controlled tasks but revert to flattened or inappropriate prominence in free communication. To address this, teachers can integrate prominence practice into regular communicative activities rather than treating it as a one-time module. Quite a number of hands-on communicative activities can be found in the “Guided & Communicative Production” section of Teaching Pronunciation with Confidence (Guskaroska et al., 2024). These activities let learners practice prominence while focusing on meaning and communication. Because learners use prominence while expressing real ideas, they are more likely to use it naturally and automatically in spontaneous speech.
Conclusion
Prominence is a powerful yet often underemphasized component of L2 pronunciation. Research and classroom experience show that appropriate prominence placement supports intelligibility, enhances pragmatic clarity, and improves listener perceptions of speaker competence. For many learners, developing control over prominence can lead to noticeable communicative gains even without native-like segmental accuracy.
Teaching prominence effectively requires a shift from sentence-level drills to discourse-based, meaning-focused instruction. By emphasizing listening, contrastive meaning, and communicative intent, teachers can help learners use prominence as a flexible resource for organizing discourse and expressing meaning.
References
Guskaroska, A., Goodale, E., Kochem, T., Ghosh, M., Compton, L., & Cotos, E., & (2025). Oral Communication for Non-Native Speakers of English, 2nd Edition. Iowa State University Digital Press. https://doi.org/10.31274/isudp.2024.161
Hahn, L. D. (2004). Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL Quarterly, 38(2), 201–223. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588378
Levis, J. M., & Muller Levis, G. (2018). Teaching high-value pronunciation features: Contrastive stress for intermediate learners. CATESOL Journal, 30(1), 139–160. https://doi.org/10.5070/B5.35968
Levis, J. M., & Silpachai, A. O. (2018). Prominence and information structure in pronunciation teaching materials. In J. M. Levis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 9th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference (pp. 216–229). Iowa State University.
Pickering, L. (2018). Discourse intonation: A discourse-pragmatic approach to teaching the pronunciation of English. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.6731
Dina Gadieva is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University with over 19 years of international teaching and educational leadership experience. She earned her MA in TESL from St. Cloud State University, MN, focusing on intonation in Russian-accented English. Her research interests include L2 pronunciation, language assessment, and oral skills development.