窈窕淑女语音教学启示.doc

My Enlightenments from “My Fair Lady”The film “My Fair Lady” provided effective tools for a lot of teaching methods and some cultural reasons for teaching a native English speaker standardized English. Today I mainly talk about the teaching methods of Prof. Higgins and my enlightenments from this film.1. The teaching methods.1.1 Tongue twisters and rhythm training.Twister and rhythm are very important in language learning. They are connected with spoken English. Prof. Higgins used a lot of tongue twisters and rhythms when he teaching Eliza the standardized pronunciation of the language. For example:“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”“In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.”“How kind of you to let me come.”“Cup , cup, cup, cup, of, of, of, of.”1.2 Recording of learners production and correction of errors in pronunciation.How do you know your pronunciation is right or not? You can record your pronunciation, and you can ask your teacher to correct it. Then you may improve your spoken level. Prof. Higgins is a clever teacher. He record Elizas voice From the beginning to the end and correct it. For example:1.2.1 “A, e, i, o, u.”: Eliza pronounced the letter “a” ai , and also said the letter “i” as a . Prof. Higgins repeated it in the right way to help Eliza conquer this kind of error in Pronunciation.1.2.2 Prof. Higgins corrected Elizas mispronunciation of the word “say” sai by way of sei .1.2.3 Prof. Higgins corrected Elizas pronunciation, speaking “ kind of you” instead“kind of you”.1.3. Listen and imitate training.If you want to study English well, you must have good mouth and ears. Listening is a important way for you to receive the information, but only listening is not enough, you must imitate and say, and do it like this, the things of imitation can become yours truely.Prof. Higgins demonstrates the pronunciation and Eliza imitate it most of the time. At last, Eliza is successful. So the listen and imitate training are important and necessary. 1.4. Using the right teaching-tools.1.4.1 Some of the types of instructional tools are very useful for Professor Higgins to teach Eliza studying. In common, the tools are very helpful in the progress of English language education. Firstly, the tools can make “student-centered learning” become true. For example, Prof. Higgins ask Eliza sit in a language laboratory. She sits next to a machine. There is a cable that goes and comes from her mouth to an apparatus. It can draw a graph on a piece of paper. The graph on the paper shows the situation of her pronunciation. According this tool, Eliza can know whether her pronunciation is right or wrong.1.4.2 The tools can test the students efficiency for their pronunciation. They can help the students to develop thyeir learning potential to a substantial extent. When Professor Higgins instructed Eliza to pronounce the letter “h”, he used a phonetics apparatus. Prof. Higgins lit a tube and turned on a rotating drum with mirrored sides. If Eliza pronounced “ h ” well, the flame was flickered, when Eliza pronounced wrong , the flame was the same as before.1.4.3 Prof. Higgins put the marbles into Elizas mouth and let her say, “With blackest moss the flower pots thickly crusted, one and all”. Eliza practiced this sentence for a lot of times with the marbles in her mouth; Then Eliza swallowed some of the marbles. It is very dangerous. And at last, Eliza pronounced it correctly. The burner, tubes, marbles and other apparatus provided useful instructional aids for pronouncing standardized English. Prof. Higgins is successful with the help of these tools. The teaching-tools cant be separated from teaching language.1.5 Approximation drills.There are a lot of approximation drills for Eliza in the film. For example: “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”In this sentence, rain, Spain, mainly, plain are the similar words. Approximation is the development of the tongue twisters. It can help the learner cultivate good habit for pronunciation. 1.6 From easy to difficult.According to Elizas different progress of studying, Prof. Higgins teach her pronunciation from easy to difficult. At the beginning, Prof. Higgins asked Eliza to practice alphabet, then phrases, sentences. For example, there was the dialogue between them when Eliza first learns the letter “h”: Eliza: In artford, ereford And ampshire, urricanes ardly ever appen.Higgins: Oh, no, no, noEliza: Shall I do it over?Higgins: No, please. Start from the very beginning. Just do this: go “har, har, har, har”.1.7 Reinforcement training. Reinforcement training means to doing a lot of practice in a short time. It is a effective method for language teaching and learning. Reinforcement training is a hard working, but it can make the learner remember deeply. If you read a word more than seven times, you can recite it. Prof. Higgins instructed Eliza through using a large of reinforcement training. For example:1.7.1 Eliza must repeat “ The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” fifty times before she slept every day.1.7.2 Prof. Higgins instructed Eliza to practice the alphabet many times, at last Eliza was boring and tired. Eliza says: “ Thats what I said: a, e, i, o, u. Thats what Ive been saying for three days and I wont say them no more.”1.8 Practicing drills.Prof. Higgins provided Eliza some opportunities to practice her language. Prof. Higgins told his mother that she should only talk about the weather and health with Eliza. In this way, Eliza was expected to practice what she had learned.2. My enlightenments for future teaching.2.1 Teaching the tongue twister and rhythm is a good strategy for my English teaching. We can design some interesting tongues and rhythms according to our teaching materials. I think that the students are interested in it very much.2.2 Cultivate the students ability of imitation. Imitation is the key of learning English well. At the same time, the teachers must improve their oral English and make sure they can speak standardized English.2.3 Choosing the proper teaching-tools is very important. Nowadays, we can use the radio, computer, CAI and so on in our class. Please remember that the teaching-tools must be safe to you