A Study on Transferred Teachers’ English Pronunciation 英语专业毕业论文.doc

south china normal university school of foreign studies a study on transferred teachers english pronunciation a case in guangdong by supervised by a senior thesis submitted to school of foreign studies, south china normal university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of bachelor of arts june, 2014 declaration of authorship i abstract quality of teachers has always been paid great attention to, especially that of primary school teachers, who play the most influential role in students elementary learning. in 2001, as the new national english curriculum requires that english should be taught from grade 3 in primary schools, a new type of primary school english teachers named “transferred teachers” came into being. transferred teachers are those non-english-major primary school teachers who shift to teach english after graduation from a training program called “in-service training for transferred teachers”. by far, these teachers have been teaching english for over four years, but there have been few follow-up researches on their pronunciation up till now. the present study investigates on the pronunciation of transferred teachers concerning consonants and vowels. the goal is to find out whether these teachers, who have received only 3-week compulsory residential training and a year long optional school- based training, are making progress and competent for elementary english teaching. as time was limited, six transferred teachers were chosen as our subjects. the study was carried out on the basis of the analysis of the errors on the recorded material of the english utterance borne out by these transferred teachers. ii 中文摘要 教师素质一直都备受关注，特别是小学教师的素质更是如此，因为小学教 师在学生初级阶段的学习起着举足轻重的作用。于 2001 年，应新英语课程标准 的要求，英语要从小学三年级教起，因此，一种被称为“转岗教师”的小学英 语教师产生了。 “转岗教师”是指从在职转岗培训毕业后从事小学英语教学的非 英语专业教师。至今为止，这些老师已经从事小学英语教育有四年多了，但很 少关于这些转岗老师语音的后续调查。本研究基于转岗教师的语音情况，求证 这些只受过三周英语专业培训和一年的在职培训的转岗教师是否有所进步且能 胜任于小学英语教学。 由于时间有限，在 1102 名转岗教师中，6 名被选为本研究的受试。本研究 是通过给六位老师的英语口头表达录音，并对录音进行其错误分析。 iii table of contents abstracti 中文摘要中文摘要 ii chapter one introduction 1 1.1 background 1 1.2 significance of the empirical study.1 1.3 purpose of the present study1 1.4 structure of the present study2 chapter two literature review.3 2.1 definition of teachers beliefs3 2.2 teachers beliefs and teaching behavior3 2.3 the expected teachers beliefs of the new curriculum.4 chapter three method5 3.1 the participants.5 3.2 procedures5 chapter four results and discussion8 4.1 status quo of the teachers beliefs8 4.2 the relationship between teachers beliefs and their teaching behavior10 4.3 teachers most concern in course planning .13 chapter five conclusion and research implications 15 5.1 the importance of teacher training 15 5.2 modification of the assessment system.17 5.3 offering adequate teaching facilities 17 references.20 appendix i18 appendix ii.19 acknowledgements 21 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 background the recent societal trends outline new educational aims designed to create the highly skilled teachers necessary for the 21st century. in such a new phase of education, fruitful teaching outcome is based largely on new teaching skills, which come from frequent teaching reflection and belief renewal. as a matter of fact, teachers beliefs tend to affect everything they do in the classroom, no matter implicit or explicit. furthermore, teachers articulated beliefs is one thing, and how they apply them in actual teaching is another thing. 1.2 significance of the empirical study as education promotion is inevitable in the new phase of education, the best way to promote teaching outcome is to get feedback from teachers and learners and refine teachers beliefs and teaching behavior. judd (1981) and wade (2002) put forward applicable methodology for education improvement based on substantial surveys. pate et al (1997) consider establishing an integrated, coherent curriculum as their ultimate aim of researches. many other experts have also endowed great significance to these sorts of research (floden pajares 1992). and breen et al (2001) suggests that these researches could be seen as a means to exploring language teaching. in fact, these empirical studies can help to refine teacher beliefs and teaching behavior as well. mann (2005) addresses that teachers develop by collecting data and reflecting. 1.3 purpose of the present study teachers beliefs and teaching behavior have been studied widely in the last decade (pajares 1992; smith 1997; breen et al 2001; nunan 2001; wade 2002; burns 2005). however, only a few qualitative studies about teachers beliefs have been carried out throughout china, let alone in guangdong province. therefore, there is a gap in this body of qualitative research on teachers beliefs in different areas of gd since the implementation of the new curriculum. the present study is attempting to help fill that gap. furthermore, many of the prior researches were carried out on relatively small samples, woods (1996) made a study of 8 teachers, wang (2002) targeted at 3 teachers, zheng woods 1996; smith 1997; breen et al 2001; borg 2003; burns 2005). chinese researchers have begun to set about studying teachers beliefs and teaching behavior in recent years (wang 2002; xia 2002; sun 2005; lou offering various options, catering for personal needs; optimizing the learning model, enhancing self-directed learning competence; concerning with students emotion, enhancing cultural awareness; promoting the assessment system, encouraging continuous development. （cited from senior english curriculum 2003:2-3） as a matter of fact, such beliefs were raised to meet the new demands of our society, to meet the new learning needs of our students. on condition that teachers beliefs and teaching were consistent with the new curriculum, fruitful teaching outcome would be yielded. however, the questions are: whats the status quo of teachers beliefs? do they behave in accordance with their articulated beliefs? and what do the teachers usually take into account in teaching? to find out all the corresponding answers, the author carried out a survey of teachers beliefs and teaching behavior in gd province. 5 chapter three method the survey consisted of 3 instruments: a teacher questionnaire developed by the author (consisted of three sections: section one-personal data and experience, etc; section two-a 25 item teacher belief section based on the 5 guidelines of the new curriculum in senior high published by the ministry of education (item 15 on belief 1, item 6-10 on belief 2, and the rest may be deduced by analogy); section three-2 open questions about teachers beliefs and teacher concern) (see appendix 1); an observation log (comprising general information and a 10-period classroom observation log (see appendix 2); an interview outline (see appendix 3). a pilot study was conducted in one type b school from guangzhou in early september 2005. based on the feedback from the pilot study, the author made revisions in the survey instruments. 3.1 the participants 10 schools from 5 of the cities in gd province participated in this study. the participants were carefully chosen: the capital city of gd-guangzhou (广州), two peripheral cities-foshan (佛山) and nanhai (南海), two relatively remote cities- puning (普宁) and shantou (汕头), respectively. 10 researchers divided the 10 schools among them during their teaching practices. however, only 8 schools data were intact and possible for analysis. altogether, there were 27 teachers from these 8 schools. table 1 summarizes the characteristics of all the subject teachers. 18 worked in grade one, and 9 worked in grade two. there were 17 female and 10 male teachers. the teachers had varying degrees of general teaching experience ranging from 1 to 43 years. the average teaching experience across the sample was 12.7 years. among them, 26 teachers had received the new curriculum training. table 1. the teachers characteristics gendergradecurriculum training malefemaleonetworeceivednot yet average teaching experience (year) no.101718926112.7 for the sake of being as objective as possible, school 7 and school 8 also excluded in the following discussions, because only one subject teacher was available from each of these two schools. consequently, the following results and discussions were based on 6 schools. 6 3.2 procedures 3.2.1 the teacher questionnaire survey firstly, the researchers invited the teachers to fill in the teacher questionnaire (tq) and fixed a time with the teachers for classroom observation. teachers filled in the general information and indicated the level of endorsement of each of the 25 items using a 5-point likert-type scale comprising the categories “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “somewhat disagree, somewhat agree,” “agree,” and “strongly agree,” scored as 1 through 5, respectively; then they responded to the 2 open questions concerning with teachers opinions and suggestions of the new curriculum (see table 2). table 2. the 2 open questions in the teacher questionnaire please write down your opinions and suggestions of the new curriculum 1. the most obvious changes 2. the most urgent problems to be solved as is shown in table 2, question 1 tells whether teachers have noticed the most obvious changes of the curriculum. and question 2 enables the author to perceive the teachers most concern, which would serve as a basis to find out whether teachers adopted particular teaching strategies to enhance their students weak point, since they have noticed where the problems lied. 3.2.2 classroom observation as there may exist a discrepancy between teachers beliefs and behavior, and apart from this, teachers may overstate or understate the beliefs underlying their actual practice. therefore, whether teachers teach in accordance with their beliefs can only be revealed from the observation of practical teaching. hence, the second data collection method was based upon a substantial classroom observation log. the researchers recorded 10 periods of english classes of every subject school. the 10 english classes were not specifically chosen, but observed at random, generating a thorough and objective data. the observation focused on 7 classroom activities, multimedia applied, textbook dealt, assessment forms, and optional courses, etc. 3.2.3 the interview in order to comprehend more about how teachers beliefs guide their behavior, and what teachers usually take into account in their teaching, face-to-face interviews were added, and the interview with teachers was semi-structured. table 3 shows the outline of the interview. table 3. outline of the semi-structure interview interview subject: senior high english teachers in guangzhou how do you usually design a lesson? and what about activities? how do you like the present textbook? and how do you apply it? do you think it is necessary for students to enhance their cultural awareness? how do you help your students enlarge their scope of background knowledge? the author arranged interviews with 12 senior one english teachers from 6 schools (comprising type a, type b and type c schools) in gz, 2 teachers from every subject school participated in the interview. the interviews were recorded implicitly by mp3, and were transcribed into written language later. 3.2.4 data analysis all data were analyzed using the statistical package for social scientists (spss)， release 10.0 and microsoft excel, release 2003. mean and standard deviation of the tq were analyzed by using descriptives; histograms were generated by using excel to illustrate the results more plainly. and within-group differences of 25 teachers beliefs of the 6 subject schools were analyzed by using one-way anova. 8 chapter four results and discussion after all the data were collected, the author began to arrange the data and analyze them. firstly, the author sorted out all the received questionnaires. and found out the valid percent of the tq was 100%. table 4 indicates the general information of the questionnaires obtained from the 6 schools. table 4. information of the received tq questionnairereceivedvalidinvalidvalid percent number25250100% 4.1 status quo of the teachers beliefs 4.1.1 mean and std. deviation of the tq starting from data analysis, the author carried out descriptive statistics analysis to analyze the tq, showing that all the means of the 5 beliefs are within the range of “3.5 to 4.4”, therefore, conclusion can be drawn that all the subject teachers “agree” with every belief advocated in the new curriculum. then the author put the data from figure 1 into the microsoft excel, generating a histogram as follows: figure 1. mean of every belief beliefsnmeans.d. b 1254.0560.4917 b 2253.9920.6843 b 3254.3600.5132 b 4254.3440.5050 b 5253.9040.5200 as is illustrated above, the histogram indicates that the means of belief 2 (offering various options, catering for personal needs) and belief 5 (promoting the assessment system, encouraging continuous development) score the lowest among the five beliefs. the causes of this result maybe: optional class and formative evaluation, etc. are newly advocated, compared with the other beliefs; and it takes time to get thorough endorsement from all the teachers. whereas, those of belief 3 (optimizing learning model, enhancing self-directed learning competence) and belief 4 (concerning with students emotion, enhancing cultural awareness) score relatively high, because learner-centered and background knowledge have been heard of long before. after that, the author made another descriptive statistics analysis to find out the 3.6 3.8 4 4.2 4.4 b 1b 2b 3b 4b 5 mean of every belief mean 9 mean and standard deviation of the teachers beliefs in every subject school. figure 2 illustrates the results of the descriptive statistics analysis. mean of 4 of the subject schools is also within the range of “3.5 to 4.4”, a same conclusion can be drawn that these schools “agree” with the new curriculum; and school 2 and school 3 got a mean higher than “4.4”, what more, mean of school 2 is within “4.5 to 5”, which indicates that teachers from school 2 “strongly agree” with the new curriculum. figure 2. mean of every subject school schoolsnmeans. d. s 153.7280.4502 s 244.5300.3523 s 344.4100.3965 s 434.0933.3717 s 533.7867.2344 s 664.2067.4236 total254.1312.4607 figure 1 and figure 2 reveal that teachers from every subject school “ agree” or “ strongly agree” with every teacher s belief put forward in the new curriculum. figure 2 also indicates that teachers beliefs differ in different schools. the histogram displays impressive differences among the subject schools plainly, and school 1 renewal and increase of the capacity of the textbook; more interaction between teachers and students; focus more on cultivating students integrative ability in learning, knowledge applying, participation, cooperation and communication; closer to authentic daily life. item 2. the most urgent problems to be solved the renewal of teachers teaching beliefs and students expectations of teaching; the conflict between the new curriculum and the college entrance examination (the conflict between integrative skills development and exam-oriented education); the conflict between students ability and the highly demanding new teaching materials and activities (esp. listening); the coherence of the junior high textbook and senior high one (esp. vocabulary); large capacity of the content in the textbook versus inadequate course hours (not enough time for assimilation and consolidation). to sum up, most teachers have noticed the renewal of the curriculum and have perceived its characteristics and advantages. they also found the current curriculum to be more demanding for their students, owing to the dramatically increased capacity of the textbook and limited course hours. in the meantime, they call for coherence of the junior high and senior high curriculum, and new testing formula. these are the shared concern of most teachers, however, the questions are: since theyve noticed the problems, did they adopt particular teaching behavior to make up for this? or how many teachers have attempted to? only substantial observation could tell. 4.2.2 observation log of practical classroom teaching bearing the teachers most concern in mind, the author proceeded to analyze all the data on the teachers behavior in the classroom as recorded in the 6 researchers classroom observation logs. the 10-period classroom observation logs recorded more than 5 teachers from grade one and grade two in every subject school. hence, these data covered a range wide enough to represent the whole subject school. 12 classification and analysis of the observation log revealed that most schools adopted the textbook new senior english for china, while schools in foshan and nanhai adopted the one senior high english. nearly all the schools applied the textbooks flexibly by supplying extra materials, omitting, adapting, or simplifying the contents to meet their students particular level. in terms of multimedia facilities, 2 schools were found to be equipped only with radios and projectors. 2 schools havent offered optional courses yet, and only 50% of the subject schools carried out formative evaluation. table 6 outlines some other basic practical teaching information collected from the classroom observation. table 6. the practical teaching information classroom activitiesoptional courses multimedia application formative evaluation school 1 reading, chorus, discussion, survey, competition of words, writing, retelling new concept english; writing radio, computer not yet school 2 reading, chorus, discussion, role-play, writing, listening audio-lingua-visual english; learning by singing radio, computer not yet school 3reading, chorus/radioyes school 4 reading, chorus