Typical pronunciation problems with Chinese students of English.doc

typical pronunciation problems with chinese students of english in recent years, there are a considerable number of students mastery of the language in words understanding, article comprehension have improved than ever before, however, pronunciation problems still exist. there are some typical pronunciation problems as following:i. approximate pronunciation confusionits a very common mistake in pronouncing vowels. some students considered that the long -vowels and short vowels are the same phoneme, but the issuing of a sound longer and the other is shorter. this understanding is wrong. for example, when we pronounce / u / and / u: /, / u / is a short vowel, while / u: / is a long vowel, they are two different phonemes. each phoneme has its own phonetic features, despite the similar sounding. a phoneme is the smallest unit in sound, a change in which will result a change in meaning. such as if the phonetic / hit / in / i / substitute / i: / becomes / hi: t /, then there is a change of meaning in these two words. only we grasp the front-back position and high-low position of the vowels accurately, can we distinguish the vowel sounds exactly.ii. added an extra sound arbitrarilychinese words are monosyllabic, and the vast majority ending with vowels. this is bound to effect on english. some english words ending with consonants like / p / / b / / t / / d / / / k / / g / / m / / n /, the students pronounce it like added a / sound. such as: pig pronounced / pig /, bride pronounced / braid /, pick pronounced / pik /. such errors also exist in consonant clusters, which consist of more than one consonant. chinese students prone to divided these consonants into two phonemes to read. for example, / tn /, / dn /, they would pronounce them / tn /, / dn /. we should pay special attention to the process, especially in transition from one consonant to another consonantiii. ignoring incomplete plosionwhen a plosive consonant is immediately followed by another consonant, only the second plosive is fully exploded. the first plosive is incomplete. this is known as incomplete plosion, which often takes place at the junction of words. for example, he has a ba(d) col(d) today. in this sentence, the letter d can not be read out in a right way according to the rule of incomplete plosion.most of chinese students could not grasp incomplete plosion exactly. some chinese students inclined to read the two plosive clearly. its very stiff and unnatural. the others inclined to omit one of the plosive consonant. there are two kinds of typical mistakes in reading english. we know that the allophones of a phoneme, take the /p/ sound as an example, the phoneme /p/ is represented differently in /pit/, /tip/ and /spit/. the phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”. in the same way, the /t/ sound in the word tar is normally pronounced with a stronger puff air than is present in the /t/ sound of star. so change allophones in a word results in a different pronunciation of the same word.iv. not good at reading strong form and weak form.its easy for chinese students to read an individual word in a weak form, but its not easy for them to keep rhythm in a sentence. weak form is a blind area in chinese students pronunciation. we know that function words usually reduced, while content words usually stressed. but its not easy to read the words in a sentence. for example, glad (+), to(+), you(+), am(+), see(+), i(+)each word is stressed in isolation, but in this sentence:i am glad to see you.only the content words are stressed.most students just remember the strong form and ignore the weak form. weak forms are the base of english rhythm. only to read the weak form in a right way, can we have a good command of the rhythm of english.according to the rule of rhythm in english, the time we spend in speaking a sentence does not depend on how many words are they, it depends on the number of the stress. lets look at the following sentences:dont go now.its only for girls and boys.the others must have been waiting for a while.in these sentences, although the number of the words is different, they cost the same time when we read it. in the case of talking in the same speed, the time required to complete the sentence is equal. the reason for that these three sentences have the same number of stress. most of the chinese students often make mistakes that they would read every word clearly, put all the weak forms into strong forms, and they consider thats standard pronunciation. with this way to speak english, not only affects the speech flow, but also makes the listener feel uncomfortable, and may even make misunderstanding.speaking english with a good pronunciation is the basic goal of learning a foreign language - communicative function. the final target of learning english is to use english appropriately on different occasions and to exchange ideas and information with others.