With the view of developing phonetic competence, pronunciation teaching should be based on systemic principles which prescribe conducting contrastive analysis of L1 and L2 phonetic systems and implementing a methodological algorithm that ensures a gradual acquisition of various phonetic skills. This article discusses the results of contrastive analysis applied to word stress in American English and Russian as well as presents examples of didactic materials developed on the ground of the conducted comparative analysis and designed for Russian speakers.