Teacher Discussion Forums

Hello,
I know that you can say "put pressure on someone". My question is can you also say "put stress on someone"? Can the definition of "stress" mean the following: the act of trying to make someone else do something by arguing, persuading, etc.; attempts to persuade, threaten, or force someone to do something: In other words, can the following two sentences have the same meaning?
1. Chinese parents put pressure on their children to go to a top university.
2. Chinese parents put stress on their children to go to a top university.

Although in Chinese one concept (压, ya1) may be involved in expressing "two" meanings, in English the concepts and words plural seem reasonably distinct: the pressuring of someone precedes them feeling stressed/~ out about it. That is, you can't really "stress" somebody into doing something (though you could stress that they should do it, but that is more to prosaically describe the stressing of the words or advice involved than any worrying or alarming of the listener per se).

In other words, pressure is the process (often a verb, though periphrastic constructions like 1) They're putting me under a lot of pressure to do this can also occur, not sure about 2) *They're putting me under a lot of ?stress ?!to do this [> 1] though, which is about the only potential English overlap here I can think of), while stress (adjectival or noun) is the result.

Again, I urge you to make your students consult general learner dictionaries and/or at least the Oxford Collocations Dictionary (all freely available online in certainly the west), but please don't let me pressure you unduly/don't feel under any pressure or get too stressed about it LOL.
http://www.ozdic.com/collocation-dictionary/pressure
http://www.ozdic.com/collocation-dictionary/stress

Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.