论文总字数：39059字

摘 要

由于英语和汉语之间的差异，人们在学习英语语音时，往往将汉语的发音习惯迁移到英语语音中，导致英语语音学习上的错误和困难。本文通过淮安方言对小学生英语语音学习影响现象的分析，探讨导致小学生语音发音出现问题的原因，从而提出改进淮安小学生英语语音学习的几点建议。本文旨在寻求克服淮安方言对英语语音产生负迁移的方法，从而提高淮安小学生英语教学质量。

关键词：英语语音；淮安方言；成因

Contents

1.Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Former researches on dialect and English phonetics 1

2.2 Theories in English phonetics learning 2

2.3 Introduction to English phonetics 4

2.4 Introduction to Huai’an dialect 5

3.Huai’an Dialect’s Influence on the English Phonetics Learning of Huai’an Elementary Students 6

3.1 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ pronunciation of phonetic vowels .6

3.2 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ pronunciation of phonetic consonants 6

3.3 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’pronunciation of phonetic tone 7

4.Causes of the English Phonetic Pronunciation of Huai’an Elementary Students 8

4.1 Mother tongue’s negative transfer 8

4.2 Teachers’ misleading pronunciation 9

5. Suggestions for Huai’an Elementary Students to Learn English Phonetics More Effectively 10

5.1 Suggestions for students to speak classic English 10

5.2 Suggestions for English teachers to teach phonetics 13

6. Conclusion 15

Works Cited 17

1. Introduction

With the development of the society and the coming concept of “Developing Chinese to the world”, English teaching plays a more important role in primary school education and the English pronunciation is especially significant. Phonetics is the foundation of learning language, because the phonetics is closely connected with word remembering, listening, oral communication and so on. So we must learn phonetic well to master and improve English level. While learning English phonetics, students are unavoidably affected by many factors. Researches found that the main factor is students" local dialect habits. As a result, improving students’ phonetic learning from primary schools is very important. In this text, by analyzing the influential factors to let students know the knowledge about English pronunciation and dialect, and let them imitate and practice the pure English pronunciation, thus to avoid dialect’s negative effects on English phonetics.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Former researches on dialect and English phonetics

During years of English teaching practice process in local normal universities, authors find such an interesting phenomenon: among English major students speaking dialect, students who are good at speaking mandarin also have standard pronunciation and good listening comprehension level. However, those who do not well in speaking mandarin always have poor English pronunciation. So, for English major students speaking dialect, is there a certain connection between mandarin, dialect and English pronunciation? Gui Cankun has pointed out, in addition to the dialect, if one can also speak one or two other languages, he will learn English phonetics fast and easily (Gui 78). Meng Yue and Wang Yanyu selected 40 English majors speaking Wei Fang dialect in Shan Dong province as investigation objects. The study found that there is a close correlation between mandarin pronunciation and English speech level (Meng and Wang 10-13). Lin Shaoarong’s research conclusion is opposite to the above point of view. Her research consider that monolinguals’ speech output capacity is stronger than bilinguals (Lin 127-131). The current domestic researches on the relations among English phonetics level, mandarin and dialects mostly on the base of theoretical studies and teaching experience, while empirical researches are rare (Li 55-58).

In the process of learning varieties of languages, a problem that is not allowed to ignore is the language migration phenomenon. With the guidance of cognitive of language migration theory, Kelleman put forward the concept of “psychological language distance”. "Psychological language distance" refers to learners’ feelings to the sense of distance between mother tongue and target language(Kelleman 37-57）. This distance and objective language distance are probably consistent but different. Kelleman emphasizes that the language learners’ subjective consciousness of the distance is very important in the process of learning phonetics and highlight learners function as cognitive subject. The participants’ feedback also proved his point of view. Because dialect students’ mandarin is improved in the long-term of practice. The level of mandarin can reflect the students" ability in language acquisition. Students having higher level of mandarin speech also have stronger ability of learning speech, imitation and speech perception. If one has a better understanding of consistence and differences between the dialect, mandarin and English phonetics, he or she will be able to overcome the negative transfer of the dialect to English phonetics learning and will be successful in using mandarin learning experience and strategy to English language learning. Therefore, dialect’s positive effects on students" mandarin pronunciation are essentially a migration of learning ability.

2.2 Theories in English phonetics learning

Vygotsky published the context of “The Problem of Preschool Education and Intellectual Development”. It tells us that when learning a new language, we should first learn the pronunciation of the language. Due to the limitations of the learning environment, the key to learn correct pronunciation is to imitate English speakers native sound recording. Due to various factors, many students are hard to learn the correct pronunciation. The practice proves that the worse your foreign language speech are, the more difficult to listen to the foreign language. It will affect all aspects of foreign language learning and bring great difficulties in foreign language learning. There are many influential factors in phonetic learning, of which the learner"s age and the first phonetic and experience are vital. It should be paid enough attention to. Vygotsky’s researches also show that if learners learn second language before the age of six, they will have little or no English accent; If learners are between the age of 7 to 12, they may have a slight native accent; If learners learn to speak a second language after 12 years old, they will almost always have certain native accent. In all, older you are, more stable the first voice system will be. In the field of psychology, phonetic is a part of personality. The older you will be, the more attention you will pay to preserve personality and don"t want to change it, which is the reason why many students don"t want to speak English in public even in English class. (Vygotsky 134)

People learning English all know that the difficulties in English are not the grammar and vocabulary, but pronunciation and phonetics. This is because when we learn English, we may easily be affected by the influence of mother tongue, mandarin or dialects habit. According to Mr. Sue bur (Ausubel 158), the cognitive structure migration theory, it is easy to find that there are also positive transfer and negative transfer between Chinese pinyin and English phonetics learning. When the native language habits, patterns and rules promote the learning of the second language. It is positive transfer; The opposite is as negative transfer.

Negative transfer usually refers to the interference or inhibiting effect that one kind of study on another kind of on learning. Negative transfer is usually shown as that a kind of learning makes another kind of learning required more time or increase the number of practice. Or it prevents to grasp another study of knowledge smoothly and correctly. Chinese and English are classified in different languages system. The differences in pronunciation is very outstanding. First of all, there is a greater difference between two languages on the system of phonemes, almost no exactly same phoneme pronunciation. Although some phonemes are similar; their organs of articulation also have some differences and easy to cause negative transfer in phonetics.

In the following chapters, I will analyze the specific influences of Huai’an dialect to English phonetics and causes of students’ pronunciation mostly based on these two theories.

2.3 Introduction to English phonetics

Phonetic teaching is an important content of language teaching. Natural and standard pronunciation, intonation will lay a good foundation for the effective oral communication. Phonetic course contains three parts: the pronunciation and correction of the English consonants and vowels, English language regulation and tone. Students should master English phonemes pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation by learning English, and gracefully apply learned knowledge in oral communication. The purpose of learning English phonetics is to use language, in order to communicate in English better. Students should understand English discourse, fluently express ideas and highlight key points. And then making the person heard clear, so as to help students lay a solid foundation in the development of English listening and speaking skills. Through phonetics learning to communicate more effectively.

When voicing vowels, sound track is shaking, exhaled air from mouth without any obstacles. It sounds very loud and clear. When voicing varies different vowels, tongue and lips have some changes, such as tongue placed before or later, high or low, lips opened or closed, round or flat, thus to change the the shape of airflow channel and adjust the airflow. It’s changing aims to voice different vowels. Vowels are divided into two categories: monophthong and diphthong. In the monophthong, by articulation, they can be divided into front vowels, middle vowels and back vowels. By the time of pronunciation, monophthong can be divided into long vowels and short vowels.

When voicing consonants, exhaled air through mouth or nasal have obstacle. This obstacle comes from the lips and teeth, tongue and teeth, and the friction between the tip of the tongue and the gum. When voicing consonants, the part formed block in the oral cavity is more nervous; exhaled airflow is stronger; sustained time is short, not clear and loud as vowels. According to the sound track, consonants are divided into voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. According to the pronunciation way, consonants are divided into plosive, fricatives, nasals, lateral and semi-vowels.

We can change the pitch to make tone up or down when speaking. We can also like a singer suddenly raise tone of the words. This rise or fall of tone is called intonation. Rising and falling tone is English basic tone. In addition, it also has falling-rising tone, rising-falling tone, rising - falling - rising tone and level tone, etc. The lifting process can be rapid or slow, and also can form different combinations. The speaker can express all kinds of information through intonation correctly.

2.4 Introduction to Huai’an dialect

Huai’an as a famous historical and cultural city, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties in history. It is a city along the banks of the canal. From north to south, multicultural communication forms the particularity of Huai’an regional culture. In addition, Huai’an region is located in China"s geographical north-south border. It’s also the intersection of north and south regional culture and folk climate transition zone. So its language convention presents the characteristics of the north and south blend. Huai’an dialect is the result of the junction of the north Wu dialect and Yue dialect. Their differences are how many voiced words they have and whether have roll up voice. Huai’an dialect features are regardless of blade-alveolar and retroflex, front and bank nasals, “l” and “n”.

Huai’an dialect initials are ‘b, p, m, l, n, f, d, t, g, h, j, k, q, x, z, c, s’, etc. The specific features are as followed:

First, all muddy initials in Huai’an dialect are cleared. Fricatives, anapestic are read aspirated voiceless. Oblique tones are read not aspirated voiceless, consistent with mandarin. But mandarin retroflex is not exsited in Huai’an dialects. Huai’an dialect often replace “z, c, s” instead of “zh, ch, sh”.

Second, in Huai’an dialect, “l” and “n” are mixed. For example, “ni” read as “li”. It’s very difficult for Huai’an people to read “niu nai” correctly.

In addition, Huai’an dialect’s biggest characteristic is keeping the Ru Sheng roar plosive terminal.

Huaian dialect also have some special characteristics of dialects, such as: “you” call “luo ge”, “today” is called “gai ge”, “tomorrow” is called “mou ge”, “yesterday” is called “za ge”, “good” is called “bu chou”, etc.

3. Huai’an Dialect’s Influence on the English Phonetics Learning of Huai’an Elementary Students

3.1 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ pronunciation of phonetic vowels

Huai’an dialect is the same with other northern dialect and mandarin in no long or short single vowel. While every Chines word has a syllable. It doesn’t require voice to be long or short; it requires speak with clear pronunciation. So when reading Chinese vowels, mouth muscles is in the state of normal. While English short vowels voiced briefly, mouth muscles are loose; long vowels voiced long and mouth muscles are nervous. Thus when Huai’an students voice /i/ and /i:/, they usually voice /i/ as short pronunciation of /i:/. Actually, the difference between this two syllables is not voicing long or short, but the different place of vocal organ. The place of /i/ in the mouth is lower than /i:/. /i:/ is half-closed, while /i/ is all-closed. When voicing /i:/, the form of two lips is in the middle of flat and normal, but the form of /i/is flat. In Huai’an dialect, when voicing initial /i/, tongue is up close the upper alveolar ridge, two lips open flat. So Huai’an students often speak words with long vowels not accurately. For example, “sleep, sheep, move”, originally voiced /sli:p/ /ʃi:p/ /mu:v/, finally voiced /slip/ /ʃip/ /muv/.

When voicing /ɔ:/ and / ɔ/, except the difference of long-short voice, their voiced place is also different. When voicing short sound, the mouth should open big, gum open and lips stay round. When voicing long sound, lips stay round as a ball. Most students only know the difference between long and short sound. In Huai’an dialect / ɔ/ open little smaller. So when speak some similar words in English, students probably voice not accurately. For example, “fox, sport, not”, affected by Chinese and dialect, they are voiced like Chinese initial /ao/.

3.2 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ pronunciation of phonetic consonants

Consonants are sounds produced with a complete or partial obstruction which prevents the air from going freely through the mouth. They are either voiced or voiceless.）

In voiceless consonants, /w/ /h/ /j/ three phonemes generally do not appear in the tail. While most Chinese phonemes don"t appear in the tail, it makes most Chinese students, including students of Huai’an are habitual to add a vowel /ə/ after word ended with a consonant. This so-called "sound adding" phenomenon. For example, ‘good’ read as /gudə/, ‘book’ read as /bukə/. In addition, this ‘sound adding’ phenomenon appear in some combination that made up of many consonants. Such as, ‘next’ read as /nekəstə/, etc.

In voiced consonants, because Huai’an pupils can’t make a clearance between ‘l’ and ‘n’. So we usually can’t listen clearly when Huai’an pupils read /l/ and /n/. Affected by the dialect, students read nice /nais/ as lice /lais/, snow /snəu/ as slow /sləu/, nap /næp/ as lap /læp/. But these two syllables actually have many differences. /n/ is an alveolar, tongue supporting upper alveolar ridge, airstream coming from nasal. While /l/ is lateral, airstream coming from one side or two sides. For the influence of dialect, pronunciation is twisted.

For there is no clear boundary between /n/ and /ŋ / in Huai’an dialect. So it is difficult for students to distinguish these two syllables. Such as, win /win/ and wing /wiŋ/, stun /stʌn/ and stung /stʌŋ/, tin /tin/ and ting /tinŋ/, son /sʌn/ and sung /sʌŋ/. Students often mix these two nasals and it becomes a big problem in teaching.

3.3 Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ pronunciation of phonetic tone

The paper probes into the effect of Huai’an dialects to English pronunciation and intonation, and both consonants and vowels belong to speech sounds, so, it is necessary to present the definition of speech sounds and their features. Consonants in Huai’an dialect read very hard, tone is not high, giving persons a kind of very hard and uncomfortable feeling, but as the mandarin popularization, now it has changed to the trend of soft, to give persons a kind of soft feeling.

Huai’an students in learning English language are greatly affected by the local accent negative transfer. Most students have problems in emphasis pitch of voice not tone. Such as, when reading question sentences, only to upgrade tones of the last syllable of words and not pay attention to the tone of the whole sentence. For example, “Do you mean to buy?” (↘↗) read as “Do you mean to buy?” (↗↗). “Do you need anything else?” (↘) read as “Do you need anything else?” (↗). Affected by dialect, when reading declarative sentences, the whole sentence intonation is flat, don’t have rise or fall. It results the overall sounds more awkward, no English flavor. Of course, there are students trying to give each English word like Chinese plus “tone”, but this way only makes spoken English more funny. Its main reason is to put stress by mistake.

Stress is an important feature in English phonetics. It includes words stress and sentence stress. Affected by Huai’an dialect whole gentle intonation, most students feeling of stress often be ignored. Thus stress and soft syllables neutralized. There is a typical example that most Huai’an students like read ‘interesting’ as ‘in’teresting’. English don’t have tone, but there is rhythm can be mastered. Stress is an abstract concept. However, in the process of learning, as long as pay attention, this reason can be avoided.

Second, Huai’an students affected by dialect also shows in English read through and province read. Chinese is staccato sound, which has obvious gap between syllables and words. Huai’an dialect although doesn’t have a clear pronunciation and mellow voice, but it is particular about speaking clearly. However, such characteristics in English became a big obstacle to speak fluent English. Because English belongs to the legato, with statements of each syllable between each word is one next to one. There is no obvious dividing line between each syllables. For example, the Chinese sentence is ‘ri ben zai ya zhou’, but in English it is ‘Japan is in Asia’. It is read as / dʒəpenizineiʒə/, among it, /niz/ /zin/ /neiʒə/ is the read through. Many students are under the influence of mother tongue’s staccato style. English is not fluent naturally if use it in the English reading.

4. Causes of the English Phonetic Pronunciation of Huai’an Elementary Students

4.1 Mother tongue’s negative transfer

The negative transfer of mother tongue mainly comes from adults’ language system which has been formed on the basis of the first language system. When learning a second language system, the adults often subconsciously refer to the mother tongue’s thinking patterns and language habits. The second language learning system also includes learning mother tongue’s cultural context. This kind of situation also appears among Chinese people when they learn English. In our country now, English learning begins from high grades in primary school. At that time, students have mastered mother tongue language system and even local dialect pronunciation skillfully. Mother tongue pronunciation has become an established habit. At this time, teaching students target language of English will cause some problems because students will naturally migrate Chinese pronunciation, structure and function of knowledge to English, or replace these two kinds of language systems’ similarities with each other. So that the influence of negative transfer stars to come into being.

English and Chinese belong to two different language families. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, which has a more flexible word form and word order and pays more attention to complete structure and sentences form. However, Chinese belongs to the Han-Zang family. Its position of the word order is fixed, which pays more attention to the sentence meaning and concept, and not be restricted by the structure. So there are great differences between their part of the pronunciation, regulation and quantity, etc, which can lead to negative transfer.

When students begin to learn English, that is, when they come to have contact with English, they are very habitual to find the pronunciation of mother tongue to label a similar pronunciation in English textbooks, and then to remember the pronunciation of the English language in that English, after all, is a second language and the mother tongue has been entrenched in their mind. They also assume that the similar pronunciation in mother tongue is directly corresponding to English accurately. These unscientific methods to memorize English pronunciation will directly affect the students" English phonetics, leading their pronunciation inaccurate. If such habits of learning are once formed in elementary school, it will be more difficult for students to correct their pronunciation later. (Odin 148)

4.2 Teachers’ misleading pronunciation

Primary school is the golden age of learning English phonetics. Pupils, at this time, have have their advantages to learn English well because their voice changing ability is so strong that they are good at imitating. However, because of some teacher"s incorrect pronunciation and intonation, students often accept the wrong pronunciation information in the beginning, which brings unsatisfactory effect into phonetic teaching and learning.

Now in many schools, both in rural and urban primary schools, many English teachers are still intuitively migrating their own dialect and un-standard pronunciation into phonetics teaching in class, which tends to mislead students into incorrect English pronunciation. What is worse is that some teachers’ working attitude is not good enough. When students learn English, some teachers do not seek the responsibility of pointing out whether students" pronunciation is accurate or not, but just focus on whether students can master English grammar well and whether they can pass the exam.

The requirements of the overall goal for basic education English course, “full-time compulsory education of ordinary middle school English curriculum standard” (experimental draft) (2001), have put forward that students" language knowledge should reach respectively 2, 5, and 8 level from primary school to high school. Some teachers think that adding phonetic teaching to primary school English teaching is an aggravating burden to students’ learning. It is known that most of the primary and secondary school English teachers only induct students to read the phonetics instead of adopting some flexible and interesting methods to clarify the pronunciation rules in English pronunciation teaching.

Many teachers in primary school pay too much attention to the study of letters, ignoring pronunciation rules and intensive training. Under the current situation, many students cannot get good command of phonemes. The lack of pronunciation rules and explanation training is the root reason of students’ difficulties in learning the letters and the phonetic symbol. Sometimes, students learn and remember words just by concentrating on the model of phonetic symbols and the words meaning. As a result, their basic knowledge about pronunciation rules are severely lacked.

5. Suggestions for Huai’an Elementary Students to Learn English Phonetics More Effectively

5.1 Suggestions for students to speak classic English

5.1.1 The importance of imitation

As we all know, Imitation is one of the main ways to learn a foreign language, the imitation should comply with some principles. To begin with, loud imitation is very important because its aim is to make oral muscles get into full activities and to change the habits of muscle movement patterns that were formed over the past years. Loud imitation should be clear. At the beginning of imitating, speed should be slow in order to put the sound in place. In the long run, students can make sentences with a normal speed and the sound will gradually become accurate. Secondly, students should imitate actively, consciously and purposefully. For example, students ought to be ready to correct words that we can’t say correctly. With this awareness, imitating won"t be dull and boring. This kind of imitation is the true imitation and it can achieve the goal of imitation. Thirdly, we need to adhere to long-term imitation. Generally speaking, pure and beautiful pronunciation can’t be achieved in such a short-term imitation. For example, a person whose mother tongue is British English cannot speak American English very well in a short time. Likewise, people who are used to speaking Chinese also have trouble in learning and speaking English in the short run. Imitation plays a very important role in English phonetic learning. Learning to imitate with correct ways is helpful to improve oral English ability.

5.1.2 Mother tongue’s positive transference

Due to the different English-Chinese two voices’ phonological systems and distribution non-correspondence to each phoneme, there are also great differences in pronunciation between them. Due to the effect of transference of the first language, English phonetics learning tends to be influenced by the mother tongue. English teaching practice proves that in the process of learning phonetics, on the one hand, the native language can promote the students" ability of mastering English phonetics; on the other hand, it also makes students affected by mother tongue easily when learning pronunciation. Phonetic transference is related to the following aspects, such as the similar pronunciation, different speech sounds and so on. It is these differences that lead to the positive transfer and negative transfer of English phonetics learning.

The pronunciation of Chinese consists of pinyin syllables. Pinyin is divided into initials consonant, finals consonant and compound vowels. The pronunciation of the English word is composed of phonemes syllables, vowels and consonants. Vowels can be further divided into single vowels and double vowels. Chinese syllables cannot lack finals consonants, while English syllables can’t lack English vowels. Chinese initials have nasals: ‘m, n’, lateral ‘l’ and cacuminal ‘r’ and ‘l’. English consonants also have nasals /m /, / n/, lateral /l/ and retroflex /r /, etc. Because Chinese pinyin initials and English consonants phonetic symbol have many similarities in pronunciation. It is not difficult for majority of Chinese students to spell the English phonemes, such as /p /. / b /, / t /, / d /, / k /, /g / and /f/, which are corresponding to p, b, t, d, k, f and g in Chinese. When spelling vowel phonemes like /I: /, / u: / and/a: /, learners also can find the related “i, u, a” in Chinese syllables. Through comparing the similarities and differences in pronunciation, we can master the correct pronunciation.

5.1.3 Explicit study target and upright study attitude

According to the latest requirements of new primary school English speech goal: read 26 English letters correctly; know the simple spelling regulation; know word stress and sentence stress; know English phonetics including liaison, rhythm, pause and intonation. The main teaching goal is to cultivate students’ phonetic consciousness, rather than the phonetic knowledge. Phonetic consciousness refers to the individual knowledge about language phonetic unit, including the ability to identify individual phonemes and the ability of voicing a single phoneme. Phonetics consciousness manifestation is: dividing the whole word pronunciation into separated phonemes；making up the individual phonemes into whole word pronunciation; being clear about the pronunciation of each letter in the word, namely, each phoneme corresponded to what font . If students qualified these above three aspects requirements, they will get qualified phonetic consciousness.

Primary school English is the beginning of the children’s English learning. Keeping interest is the most important. Parents observed that children enthusiasm in English at the beginning is very high, but some children will gradually lose enthusiasm or even began to hate English after a while. So keeping interest is the key to the success. Secondly, at the beginning of English learning, students’ listening and pronunciation system should be trained to achieve English basic using requirements. Parents can arrange an English training class outside courses for children, so students can practice oral English together with English teachers and solve English listening and pronunciation problems. Thirdly, letting children take an active part in lots of language practice. Through suitable and lively classroom activities to directly combine English learning with English using. So as to create a good language environment. So that students can maintain a positive learning attitude toward a happy and confident mood. Lastly, children should be actively to use English in their life and parents can let children express some sentences in English and use English introduce themselves, etc. Encouraging children to practice frequently is of great benefit to improve their English.

5.2 Suggestions for English teachers to teach phonetics

5.2.1 Attention to phonetic learning and consideration of the particularity of English teaching

According to the different functions of English intonation. Teachers can teach students do comparison practice. To do phonetics training, teachers can start from the aspect of listening and do the listening training together. In addition, to do listening practice, the most important thing is to recognize and distinguish phonemes. Teachers should let students standardize pronunciation at the beginning. While oral practice should give priority to imitate pure English recordings, from simple to complex progressively. In order to let students practice in the natural language environment. Starting from the basic speech, at the same time to improve students" listening comprehension and the ability to distinguish between different syllables, rhythm and intonation. Children songs, tongue twister are also effective methods to check whether students have learned to distinguish the sound. Children songs, tongue twister appear alternately, forming a distinctive rhythm. It is very helpful to English phonetics learning. (Roach 89)

5.2.2 Active guidance in phonetics learning

For students, they should pay attention to observe and understand in order to imitate. In phonetics teaching, teachers should demonstrate pronunciation first; and then let students to know the English pronunciation, intonation by looking at the mouth of teachers’ demonstration and listening to the teacher"s pronunciation. Teachers demonstration set a imitation example for students in expressions model. It requires teachers to pay attention to following points when demonstration: firstly, teacher"s voice demonstration should be right mouth, clear pronunciation and standard tone. Secondly, teachers should stand in the place where students can see. Teachers should move around when leading reading to avoid losing voice or inflection for students. In addition, in the process of phonetic teaching, in order to avoid students feeling boring, teachers should speak less rules and do more imitation. Lastly, teachers should pay attention to alternate all sorts of games. (Gotardo Yan and Siegel 530-542)

Teachers can design some listen and distinguish games. One kind is written exercises, such as “Listen and circle, Listen and tick, Listen and match. Listen and number”. Another kind is “listen and hand for card”, “listen and point words”, “listen and place cards” and so on in order to enhance students" interest in learning pronunciation. In addition, teachers can through some magic games to teach phonetic. Please each student to take a soft iron wire, when teacher say a word, students should quickly wire out the shape of the letter. The fastest students will be rewarded. Reading practice is indispensable in voice training. The key is how to practice reading aloud. It can adopt the way of competition, the form of games, or a collective way of reading aloud. Contrast training can through comparing phonemes to strengthen distinguish ability, such as: “ship – sheep, bed – bad, hat – had”. Teacher can also do singing training. Rhyme is one of the content of phonetics training. It can adopt the way of sing practice to do questions and answers.

5.2.3 Improvement of teaching quality

Primary school English teaching quality mainly depends on the English teachers’ overall teaching level. Students" English pronunciation directly depend on the quality of English teachers’ phonetic quality. Because primary school students don’t have theory knowledge of phonetics. They learn English phonetics mainly by listening and imitating teachers. Especially in the poor rural areas, students" English learning mainly done at school. Teacher’s pronunciation is students’ learning model. So students majored in primary English education must have good English phonetics theory quality. It is not only inner need to learn English well, but also external needs of promoting the development of English education in China. At the same time, through the college English courses, they can not only master phonetics theory knowledge, but also correct pronunciation through their university English phonetics class experience to affect and guide students. It makes students feel the tenderness in the phonetic teaching, so as to improve teaching efficiency.  

Primary school English teachers have to be qualified good phonetics theory and be aware of every language phenomenon. Only in this way they can make a perfect teaching work. Such as: for some difficult vowels, long voice has to be long enough; round labial should be round enough; flat labials should be flat enough. Teachers should also pay attention to the slip-flow voice in double vowels and so on. Teachers have to use e correct theory of English phonetics to show students correctly demonstration and let the student see mouth shape and listen clear. From these two aspects to imitate, students can form good basis level of English phonetics.

6. Conclusion

Based on the introduction to English phonetics, Huai’an dialect and former researches, this essay analyzes Huai’an dialect’s influence on students’ English pronunciation of vowels, consonants and tone. Mother tongue’s negative transfer and teachers’ misleading pronunciation are the main causes of Huai’an elementary students’ poor English pronunciation. According to the analysis, students and teachers should all make efforts to avoid Huai’an dialects’ negative transfer while learning or teaching English phonetics. This essay aims to improve students’ ability of English phonetic pronunciation and make students speak English more fluently. It may also be theoretically instructive in teaching practice. Phonetic teaching stage is important foundation for English learning. Teachers should constantly improve their own quality, concern themselves with students’ psychological characteristics and the current social situation. So as to standardize students’ pronounciation, students should avoid the negative transfer of dialect as far as possible.

Works Cited

Ausubel, D.P. The Cognitive Structure Migration Theory, 1968.

Gotardo.A., B.Yan, and L.S.Siegel.“Factors related to English reading performance in Children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological processing.” Journal of Educational Psychology: General 93(2001): 530-542.

Kelleman.E.“Transfer or non-transfer: Where we are now” Studies in Second Language Acquisition: General 2 (1979): 37-57.

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