语音学习对高一年级学生英语听说的影响.doc

AbstractLanguage is vocal. Clear and understandable pronunciation is the basis for successful English teaching and communication. Mastering pronunciation is not only the basis for a language, but also the key to improving learners comprehensive linguistic abilities. However, the teaching of pronunciation has not been regarded as an important part of English teaching. Hence, many problems exist in the teaching of pronunciation. Those problems are obstacles for students to improving spoken English and developing the comprehensive abilities.Based on the questionnaire and the result of a pronunciation test, this thesis analyzes the problems existing in the pronunciation study of high school and the causes of those problems, and the author wants to find some solutions to improving students pronunciation proficiency as well. Key words: English phonology; English study; problems; solutions 摘 要语言先是有声的，清晰易懂的语言则是人们顺利学习和交流的基础。语音不仅是掌握语言的基础，还是提高学习者综合水平的关键。然而英语语音中存在的问题不仅有碍于英语口头交际能力的发展，而且在很大程度上阻碍学习者英语综合能力的提高。 本文根据对高一年级新生的问卷调查和语音测试的结果，对高一年级学生在英语学习中普遍存在的语音问题及成因进行分析，并提出相关的学习对策，以便提高学生的语音能力。l 关键词：英语语音;英语学习;问题;对策Contents1. Introduction .11.1 Background of the Study .11.2 Scope of the Study .11.3 Significance of the Study.21.4 Research Questions .21.4.1 Results of bad pronunciation.21.4.2 Listening is the weakest part in the test. .32. Literature Review .33. Research Methods .53.1 Research Subjects.53.2 Research Instrument .63.3 Collection and Analysis .64. Results and Analysis.74.1 Results of Questionnaire Analysis.7 4.2 Results of Listening Experiment .94.3 The Reasons for Those Problems. .115. Conclusion.13Appendix Appendix 1. Introduction1.1 Background of the StudyLanguage is a tool of human communication and a clear pronunciation is the basis of successful communication. Good pronunciation results in successful communication, thus enabling people to get across more effectively (Van WearneTheunissen, 1987). It is a common sense to every English learner. But they can not apply it in practice. There are many reasons.During the learning practice of the author in No. 1 Middle School of Yunxian County, she found that the phonology was the weakest part of English learning, which resulted in many problems. Weak pronunciation would lead to weak speaking, which caused other problems. For example, students could not understand teachers or they could not understand each other. And the score of listening was the lowest part in the examination, because students could not distinguish the homophony, the sound linking and so on.As a student for the future teacher, the author found that the phonology was the most important in teaching English. It was the basis of the next teaching process. It must be taught continuously.1.2 Scope of the StudyThis study focuses on the importance of the phonology to the English teaching. The subjects were the senior high school students. The majority of them came from the village. The pronunciation of them was bad. The author tried to find the practicable methods to teach phonology in the future teaching process by studying the test question and observing the classroom performance.1.3 Significance of the Study English fills every part of the universe. It is spoken by people all over the world with different goals. We can see that it becomes more and more important with the reform of the teaching aim. The communication based teaching is also becoming more and more popular than the grammar teaching. Teachers have to change the ways of teaching English. The book of high school is changed with many communication tasks in it. Many problems exist in the communication tasks. In the teaching process, teachers and students can not understand each other with the wrong pronunciation or students may be confused with the order of teachers. They also have many troubles with the listening. They are not able to obtain the content of the listening materials or grasp the sound linking. The homophony, stress and intonation are difficult to students and so on. By means of study the author finds that all of those problems are caused by the weakness of phonology. It is in vain that teachers ask students to do so many listening practices, because the phonological foundation of students is not solid.This essay is mainly about the phonological problems of students in the first grade of the senior high school. Based on the research the author can find the suitable methods to teach the students in the future and try to avoid the problems which have been mentioned above. So it is essential to an English major, who wants to be an English teacher with proficient skills.1.4 Research QuestionsThe research questions proposed in this thesis are:1.4.1 Results of bad pronunciation Poor pronunciation is a barrier of words, which results in the students difficulty in understanding ordinary orders of teachers. Furthermore, they are not good at communication. And the receptive or productive skill is not bought into full play.1.4.2 Listening is the weakest part in the testListening was a weak point to the senior high school students. The score was the lowest part in the examination. Although teachers had made many efforts they could not gain any progress. The students were lacking the ability to listen correctly, which was an obstacle for students to imitating. The author hoped to find the reason for that. And then the author wanted to study the relationship between listening and pronunciation. It would be good for the future teaching.2. Literature ReviewAs professor A.C. Gimson (1976) declared “for one person to master a language, he must acquire the phonological knowledge to 100%, grammar to 50%-90% while vocabulary to 1 is enough”. Therefore, great efforts should be made at pronunciation in order to study English well.And yet it has been claimed (Tarone 1974; Channel 1988) that learners use stress to select what is important as they listen to a stream of English and that they therefore need to know for each word both the stress pattern that would be found in a dictionary and patterns that might be heard in continuous speech. This would suggest that, if the purpose for learning English is to listen and understand, then learning word stress is important. If learners process speech partly by recognizing syllables patterns and stress, knowledge of these stored in the mental lexicon will facilitate quick comprehension.Esling and Wong (1983), for instance, suggest that the students are given early instruction on how to set their articulator organs to produce the typical voice quality of North American English speakers, it will be easier for them to produce individual sounds.A habit was formed when a particular stimulus became regularly linked with a particular response. There were various theories about how this association could take place. In the classical behaviorism of Watson, the stimulus was said to “elicit” the response. Continual pronunciation teaching is essential in the English teaching, if teachers can not do that, students will not form the habit to speak confidently. Language learning, first and second, was most successful when the task was broken down into a number of stimulus response links, which could be systematically practiced and mastered one at a time.The learner factors that can influence the course of development are potentially infinite and very difficult to classify in a reliable manner. SLA research has examined five general factors that contribute to individual learner differences in some path. These are age, aptitude, cognitive style, motivation, and personality (Rod Ellis, 1999: 10). Learners who are interested in the social and cultural customs of native speakers of the language they are learning are likely to be successful. Similarly when learners have a strong instrumental need to learn a L2, they will probably prosper. Conversely, learners with little interest in the way of native speakers of the L2 or with low instrumental motivation can be expected to learn slowly and to stop learning some way short of native speaker competence. The role of motivation has been extensively examined in the work of Gardner and Lambert (1972) in the context of bilingual education in Canada and elsewhere. But the class of English is boring, the knowledge in the book beyond the life of students. They are not interested in it. Teachers have not paid enough attention to learning about the affection of students. A review of the curriculum prior to 2000 (Wang, 1999:41) indicated the following areas that needed to be addressed. First, there was an overemphasis on the delivery of knowledge about the language while ignoring the development of students language ability. Secondly, there was a lack of connection between different stages of schooling. Thirdly, little allowance was made for catering individual learner differences. Fourthly, assessment was done mainly using paper-and-pencil tests focusing mainly on language knowledge, giving little attention to the assessment of language ability. Both teachers and students felt overburdened by examination. 3. Research Methods3.1 Research SubjectsResearch subjects of the questionnaire were the authors students in the teaching training. The age of them ranged from fifteen to sixteen. They were in Grade One of the high school. The total numbers of them were forty-five. The subjects were made up of different personalities and came from different places. The reason why Grade One was chosen as subjects was that they had entered high school, they had learned the pronunciation but they still had problems with the pronunciation of words and they could not understand the orders of teachers. And the atmosphere of classroom was inactive, they were not willing to communicate with others, and the score of listening was the lowest part in the test paper. 3.2 Research InstrumentsThe instrument employed in the present study was a self-designed questionnaire on pronunciation learning attitudes and problems. A test of English pronunciation was also provided. Below were brief descriptions of each instrument.First, in the questionnaire, there were nine questions concerning their attitudes on status of pronunciation in English learning. Meanwhile, there were other questions concerning their problems in English learning. Besides, the questionnaire also collected the personal information of the subjects, including name, gender, age, and years of learning English. Fifty questionnaires were handed out and forty-five were called back. The structure of the questionnaire was presented in Appendix I.Second, the investigator randomly chosen twenty-five students out of questionnaire subjects and recorded their scores of the listening part in the test paper. They were given twenty minutes to prepare and read the material. The subjects listening scores were recorded.3.3 Collection and AnalysisThe first part, the questionnaire, was the prerequisite of the other one phase. The questionnaires were distributed to the students on September 21, 2009. Finally, the subjects took part in the test of listening. The material of exercise was picked up from the “step by step” and the direction was the aim of it. The second step collected and evaluated questionnaires. Firstly, the investigator randomly chose twenty-five students out of questionnaire subjects. Secondly, the investigator recorded their answers in the listening test. The last phase calculated and analyzed data, and then found out the reasons that influenced the pronunciation learning.4. Results and AnalysisThis chapter shows the results of the questionnaire research and listening experiment. 4.1 Results of Questionnaire AnalysisQuestionsStudent NumberabcQuestion1 45181710Question24591521Question3453078Question445102510Question5456910Question645201114Question7453528Question8453690Question94520250In question 2, when students were asked to imitate others most of them were conservative to do that. Only nine students liked to imitate. We could see that the personality attitude was one of the reasons to influence students to learn the pronunciation. And individual might be influenced by a variety of motivations which would affect such things as anxiety, or attitude, or willingness to try new learning strategies. The imitation was a way to practice. We could imitate the accent of foreigners. And they did not know the aim of English learning. Hence, they thought that the pronunciation was not important to the English learning, not until they entered the high school. The test books of Grade One in high school had been changed. There were many interaction activities in it. A series of problems had occurred when they communicated with each other. They could not understand each other and the order of teachers. The pronunciation of words was wrong which made them be confused or they could not express their ideas clearly with the incorrect pronunciation. Language is a tool of human communication. Good pronunciation results in successful communication, thus enabling people to get a message across more effective (Van were & Tennessean, 1987).In the test, listening was the most difficult part for them to finish. Burstall (1975) explains that listening comprehension involves interpretation and the knowledge of discrete elements of language such as phonology, vocabulary and syntax. They could not hear the linking words or they spell the word by syllables. They maybe have recognized that the pronunciation was important in the English Learning. It had close relationship with reading, writing, speaking and listening. If students grasped the pronunciation well, they would be easy to remember the word. We need good pronunciation and intonation in order to make ourselves understood by those with whom we share the information when we read out.And we also could see that the teaching way of teacher also was a factor to influence that from the questions four, five and nine. Most of students said that the attitude of teacher would influence the enthusiasm of them to learn it. They said the English phonology was so dull. There was nothing to do just to repeat following the teacher when they came into the middle school. And in the classroom the opportunities to the interaction between students and teachers were less. Most of time had been used to grammar teaching. The listening only got to train before the test. Teachers had no chance to find the errors of students in speaking. The errors in writing could be found easily through the composition. If you did not speak, the errors of pronunciation would be hard to find by teachers. The teaching methods of teachers also influence students. If a teacher applied the communicative language teaching, she would find the oral errors of students. What caused the errors of students, the teacher would study. The pronunciation teaching was not regarded as an essential part to teach, the knowledge of pronunciation could not be checked in time. And most of practices about grammar in the learning process led to less practice in speaking. Students had no chance to open mouth to communicate with others; the errors of pronunciation would not be found and corrected. Weak pronunciation would lead to weak speaking and listening. A habit was formed when a particular stimulus became regularly linked with a particular response. There were various theories about how this association could take place. In the classical behaviorism of Watson, the stimulus was said to “elicit” the response. That is, the presence of stimulus called forth a response. If the stimulus occurred sufficiently frequently, the response became practiced and therefore automatic (Rod Ellis, 1999: 21). The Teacher should let the student form a habit to accept and feedback information exported by teachers in English. The pronunciation is the key point to achieve that goal.4.2 Results of Listening ExperimentDrillStudent numberab c done2515100atwo2513210cthree258107cfour251672afive 250250bsix 250250cseven 2514110beight251069bnine250250bten252500beleven2511140btwelve250250bthirteen251960bfourteen259610bIn the first part of the test, the author gained the reasons that affected the learning of pronunciation. There were two parts to do that, the first one was the inside factors of students, the other one was the teaching method and attitude of teachers. In the second part, the author found reasons from the test of listening. The words in the brackets were difficult to distinguish. The students must listen carefully to finish it. The errors in the diphthongs were less than the pure vowels. And students agreed that the pure vowels were the most difficult to learn and the consonant is the last difficult part but one. In this part she found that about twenty-five students could not pronounce the front vowels and distinguish the back vowel a： and the central vowel/. For exa