A thesis submetted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degre "Licence en Langue et littérature Anglaise"

Résumé,

This work sought to study the way Burundi students use stress of English. The study paid attention to the factors which induce students to certain misuse of the aspect of stress patterns.
This study sough to find out the impact of three elements. First, the study examined the impact of language interference on the use of English word stress. Second, it investigated the impact of the complex nature of stress rules on the students' attitudes towards learning stress patterns.

At last, the study evaluated the impact of students' poor reading of materials related to stress patterns. After the analysis of data collected with the first insrument, we found out that a number of words were uttered with wrong stress because of the influence of either French accents or Kirundi. In addition, we foud out that other words were misprounced with stress placed on wrong syllables as a result of generalization of rules governing the stress patterns.
In the anlysis of data from both the students' and lectures' questionnaires, we found out that English stress is an aspect that causes trouble to students but attracts less of their attention. The reason is that, the patterns of stress are a difficult aspect of the English language.

As a matter of fact, very few students are interested in the reading of books related to this aspect of the English language in particular and linguistics in general. In the light of our findings, a number of recommendations were formulated.