4.4 Interpretation of results

First of all, it should be considered that three of the chosen words belong to the advanced vocabulary: ancillary, capillary and miscellany. Therefore, it is quite probable that a majority of the speakers had not come across those words in spoken English yet. It certainly depends on the level of proficiency whether a speaker knows which is the correct stress pattern of these words in his or her preferred variety of English.

Another important reason why the speakers may not be consistent in their usage of stress placement is the diverse L2-input: Teachers at school were either talking in RP or GA or even in a mixture. The same may also hold true for university lectures plus the lecturers differ in every course. Furthermore, there is the influence of TV, especially of popular American TV series, so that a lot of German speakers of English might pick up typically American stress patterns.

Negative transfer from the German language might be another reason why speakers are not consistent in their usage of stress patterns. It should be considered that “second language learners' speech [...] bears a certain resemblance to the first language” (Archibald 1998: 3).

All in all, no conclusion about the usage of stress patterns of German speakers of English can be drawn because only 16 speakers were investigated. Besides, the speakers all have a similar background: they are all students and roughly the same age. Furthermore, no conclusion about the consistency of German speakers of English regarding their chosen variety can be drawn because only a small range of words was investigated. Nevertheless, the findings give reason to investigate this topic more profoundly. In such a study more speakers should be recorded plus the speakers should read out utterances or sentences in order to avoid the problem of unnaturally articulated speech.

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