When teaching word stress to ESL students, is it worth teaching secondary stress placement?

Question

I often incorporate stress training into my classes as it is very important for intelligibility (as better awareness of stress placement will give students clearer speaking and better listening skills). However, I am wondering whether it is worth bothering with secondary stress placement (eg. for words like 'recommend' that have primary stress on the third syllable but secondary stress placement on the first syllable).

I normally indicate stress placement with simple symbols (eg. recommend = ooO). I have seen visual language that shows both primary and secondary stress (so shapes of different sizes) in methodology books but never seen any teachers actually use these.

As far as I can tell, secondary stress placement is more or less ignored in the ESL world. It is hardly mentioned in the most prominent ESL texts (barely mentioned in Sound Foundations by Underhill or How to Teach Pronunciation by Kelly). Could this be because secondary stress placement is so inconsequential that the topic doesn't warrant much focus? If anyone has any insight on what proportion of words have primary+secondary stress, or the potential for loss of intelligibility if secondary (not primary) stress is misplaced, would be interested to discuss!

Answer 1

There might be pedagogical utility to that, or not. I think is depends on how you explain the lack of vowel reduction in the first syllable. Or, the lack of flapping in "latex". All near minimal pairs involving secondary stress vs. being unstressed also have other subtle clues regarding stress, such as consonant allophony and vowel reduction. If you manage to correctly convey the flapping and reduction facts, then secondary stress becomes completely redundant, hence non-explanatory. OTOH, it is probably easier to start with secondary stress and explain reduction and flapping by reference to stress, and that's a pedagogical problem, not a linguistic one.

Answer 2

I personally would not involve secondary stress in the lesson plan for a class of ELLs, because it might be too much information to convey for the precious time that you have in that space. Additionally, I'd want to avoid my students putting too much effort into internalizing/memorizing secondary stress placement, especially if they are early in their path to gaining proficiency. Third, chances are that your pronunciation of them will not only be enough, but also produce more accurate elicitations than the perhaps oversimplistic marking of secondary stress. That being said, certain learners who are closer to being relatively proficient who also specifically desire to acquire pronunciation which is more exact may of course warrant your attention outside of the main lesson, and maybe you could print an additional sheet out for them when covering new vocab which indicates secondary stress. For these people, that extra detail may not be inconsequential.