CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 A General Research Background
Authentic English pronunciation are most difficult for Chinese learners. The sound system of English includes two parts: segmentals and suprasegmentals. The former includes individual vowels and consonants while the latter comprises stress, pitch contour or intonation, and rhythm. Chinese ESL learners practice more on the segmentals. However, according to (Kang et al. 2017), 50% of the oral fluency and comprehensibility can be explained by the suprasegmental features. Therefore, prosodic features, including length, accent and stress, tone, and intonation play an very important role in intelligibility and comprehensibility of English learning. For Chinese ESL/EFL learners, their prior knowledge and experience of one or more languages often influence the way they learn new language. The use of the native language (or other language) influences the acquisition of an L2 (or additional language) is called language transfer (Gass, 1979). There are abundant evidence for transfer in all aspects of language: phonology, syntax, semantics,and pragmatics. It is accepted by the majority that the transfer in phonology is more evident than that of other linguistic levels (Ellis, 1994). According to Avery and Ehrlich (1992), the existence of “foreign accent” is largely influenced by a learner's native language, and the pronunciation errors made by ESL learners often reflect their sound inventory, rules of combining sounds, and the stress and intonation patterns of their native language (Swan & Smith, 1987).
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1.2 The Need for the Study
Pronunciation teaching and learning is also a target in English curriculum in China. According to the 2017 New English Curriculum for Chinese Junior Middle Schools, drafted by the Education Ministry of the PRC, schools aim to develop students’ comprehensive language competence. As a part of the language knowledge and skills, pronunciation plays a vital role in student’ comprehensive language competence. Junior middle school students are supposed to achieve pronunciation objective Level Five after finishing three years of English learning at school.
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