An experiment was carried out at the University of Edinburgh to discover ways in which students might be helped to understand spoken language and to become more confident in their interactions in the language. As a result of the experiment findings, materials were designed to train students to perceive stress patterns, to internalize stress-timing at both word and sentence levels, and to develop an accurate awareness of the perceptual structure of the message. The materials and methods of the course that was developed were designed to exploit the advantages of the tapes in use in the language laboratory, and the possibilities offered by the laboratory for active student use of the language and for self-assessment. The materials prepared for the course were chosen according to linguistic, functional, and stylistic criteria. The stress and rhythm patterns were simplified for perceptual training through regularization of the patterns, while maintaining the stress location of the authentic discourse. It is claimed that such training in stress perception allows the understanding process to operate more efficiently and accurately, and that its most important feature is the active and critical matching of the main stress pattern as this is perceived by the student with the "objective" stress pattern of the master. (AMH)