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ost studies focused on acoustic relates, ignoring phonological aspects (Chenet al., 2001; Mc Gory & Tevis, 1997; Ng & Chen, 2011). As for phonological aspectssuch as stress assignment and intonation, rare investigation has been conducted. Thirdly,most studies of EFL learners’ stress are either perceptive or productive. Few of themprobed into the relationship between learners’ perception and production of Englishstress.
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Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Basic Concepts Related with Stress
When coming to stress, people unfamiliar with linguistics are usually equal it withloudness. However, this is incorrect. Stress is a linguistic means to render syllables orwords more prominent and outstanding comparing to others. The following aredefinitions of stress by several renowned linguists:Fry (1958) regards stress of English to be integration of pitch, length and intensity,among which pitch is the most important element, followed by length, intensity.According to Richard (1992), stress refers to the prominence of a word or syllable，which is produced with more force than its surrounding words or syllables. Thisdefinition is similar with John’s (1962) “stress might be described as the degree of forcewith which a sound or syllable is uttered. It is essentially a subjective action”. The view“stress is greater effort” is also agreed with by Lehiste & Hammond (1970).Cruttenden (2014) refers stress to the syllable which is prominent above others,either in individual words or in longer utterances. He points out that stress is part of thephonological patterning of English as well as is an important factor that influencesspeech naturalness.Bloomfield (1995) holds that the phenomenon of stress is caused by not only thegreater amplitude of sound wave but also more energetic movements.
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2.2 Basic Concepts Related with Phrase
Halliday (2008) claimed that “A phrase is a contraction of a clause, being a unitlying between the rank of a clause and that of a word”. Different definitions of phrasehave been proposed by a great number of experts in the field of linguistics fromdifferent perspectives. In terms of function, Quirk et al. (1985) stated in AComprehensive Grammar of the English Language that “The constituents which function as elements of clause structure are either phrases or subordinate clauses.” Interms of the internal structure of phrases, Dai & He (2005) claimed in A New ConciseCourse on Linguistics for Students of English that “Syntactic units that are built arounda certain word category are called phrases, the category of which is determined by theword category around which the phrase is built.” Combining internal structure andsyntactic role of phrases, Zhao et al. (2005) defined a phrase as “a group of connectedwords that does not contain a subject and a predicate and cannot stand alone, but is usedas a member of a sentence”. Similarly, Chen (2007) stated in English Linguistics: APractical Coursebook that “Words combine into phrases, most of which are freecombinations like ‘a dark room’ and ‘read the passage carefully’. Phrases, which lacksubject-predicate structure, may be of various kinds, such as nominal, verbal, adjectival,adverbial and prepositional.” Wisely J. B. (2010) stated in An English Grammar that “Aphrase is a group of words, not having a subject, predicate, or copula, which is used inthe sentence with the value of a single word;