语音学习对高一年级学生英语听说的影响

AbstractL anguage 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。

关键词：英语语音;英语学习;问题;对策Contents1. Introduction (1)1.1 Background of the Study (1)1.2 Scope of the Study (1)1.3 Significance of the Study (2)1.4 Research Questions (2)1.4.1 Results of bad pronunciation (2)1.4.2 Listening is the weakest part in the test........................................ (3)2. Literature Review (3)3. Research Methods (5)3.1 Research Subjects (5)3.2 Research Instrument (6)3.3 Collection and Analysis (6)4. Results and Analysis (7)4.1 Results of Questionnaire Analysis (7)4.2 Results of Listening Experiment (9)4.3 The Reasons for Those Problems……………………………………………….. ..115. Conclusion (13)Appendix ⅠAppendix Ⅱ1. 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 Wearne＆Theunissen, 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 StudyEnglish 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 pronunciationPoor pronunciation is a barrier of words, which results in the students’ difficulty inunderstanding 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, grea t 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 earlyinstruction 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 thecurriculum 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 author’s 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 statusof 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’ liste ning 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 AnalysisIn 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 successfulcommunication, 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 ofpronunciation 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 ExperimentIn 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／Λ/. For example in the test three of drill one, the correct answer was c, however most of them chose a. Many students used ／Λ/ to replace／a:/. The first letter needed to open the mouth bigger and the position of tongue was upped higher than the second one. Other students could not pronounce the fricative consonants／θ/ correctly. The author wanted to learn the standard of pronunciation of them. She randomly chose five out of twenty-five students to read the sentences. There were many problems. For example, they ignored the intonation of the sentences, the falling tone, the rising tone and the falling-risingtone could not apply. The emotion of the speaker could not express.4.3 The Reasons for Those ProblemsThe teachers had not paid more attention to the phonology teaching. It was just taught to students in several weeks when they entered the secondary school, on the contrary, the grammar was taught to students from the beginning to the end of the middle school. Hence, pronunciation was a weak point to students. They had no chance to practice it. Hence, teachers also had no opportunity to find the errors of students and help them to correct that. Weak pronunciation was also not good to improve the vocabulary. Listening was only practiced before the test. It was maybe good for a short time. If teachers wanted students to make a steady progress in listening, it would be essential to practice again and again. And the phonology was the foundation of speaking and listening. Weak listening was the result of poor pronunciation, which also led to being short of words. Because in the initial stages of language learning it was common for teachers to insist on a fair amount of pronunciation practice of new words to help learners acquire the correct stress pattern of syllables.In the later stages, this is often discontinued as the focus of learning changes to other aspects of language and as individual learners pick up vocabulary in their own way and at their own rates. 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 syllable patterns and stress, knowledge of these stored in the mental lexicon will facilitate quick comprehension (Wang, 1999:76).The National English Curriculum has clearly pointed out that the aim of language learning is to train the language ability of students and apply it. The pronunciation is thefoundation to gain that, but the grammar teaching is placed the most important position than other four skills in order to make a progress in the test. The task based language teaching is a good method to achieve that goal. Real world tasks and pedagogical tasks are included to it. Teachers should stimulate the interest of students to learn English. They can use the topic around students, and then give some orders to them to finish it. The input of teachers is important in this process. Hence the good pronunciation is a useful tool to express their orders clearly to students. The most majority of teachers are not aware that the phonology is an essential part to teach English.The negative factors of students themselves also influence the English pronunciation learning. Many teachers would say that pronunciation work is one of the most difficult areas for students because awkwardness, inhibition, embarrassment, and fear of losing face tend to come strongly to the fore. It is important to get a balance between correction and encouragement. According to (Wang, 1999), speaking activities are probably the most demanding for students and teachers in terms of the affective factors involved. Trying to produce language in front of other students can generate high levels of anxiety. Students may feel that they are presenting themselves at a much lower level of cognitive ability than they really possess; they may have a natural anxiety about being incomprehensible; they may have cultural inhibitions about losing face with the local accent, or they may simply be shy personalities who do not speak very much in their first language. It is therefore a major responsibility for the teacher to create exciting and various classroom environment in which students are prepared to imitate and pronounce (Wang, 1999:164).In fact, some teachers just teach pronunciation by reading the words and ask students torepeat them. The pronunciation organs which have been applied are not important to the student. As for this reason, the student has become lazy to follow the teacher. If the pronunciation of teacher is bad, the result of the learning will be worse. Teachers’ correct pronunciation will be helpful to help students to come into being right speech sound. It will be more effective to practice the listening before the test in a short time and the interaction of classroom will be active.5. ConclusionIn this chapter, a summary of the studying is provided, and the application in the filed of pronunciation teaching and learning is provided based on the research result. Two methods are applied in the study to gain results. The author finds that pronunciation is the key point to influence the English learning though the listening tests in which they can not distinguish the pure vowels.Students had an awareness of pronunciation after they had entered the high school. Based on the results of the questionnaire, the author could conclude that most students have recognized that the pronunciation is important. But for many reasons they could not pay more attention and time to it.They cared about their local accent when they spoke English. In fact, they were eager to get rid of their accent and to speak fluently and correctly. Additionally, maybe they did have realized how important to learn the pronunciation. If they had learned the pronunciation well, they would enjoy interaction without obstacles on communication and understanding.Pronunciation is the base of language learning. In language learning, pronunciation can affect many aspects such as oral communication, vocabulary and so on. So it is verysignificant to learn English pronunciation. So as teachers for the future, majors of English should pay more attention to learning the pronunciation. Clear and correct pronunciation needs remorseless practice, because practice makes perfect. But the oral English course can not replace pronunciation course. The ultimate goal of learning a foreign language is for communication. Pronunciation teaching should be conducted as an important course. The course of pronunciation is boring, so the teaching methods of teacher also are important. Teachers should pay more attention to the methods of pronunciation teaching, at the same time, teachers also care students’factors. Due to biological differences, different students have different phonetic ability. Teachers must know that and then make a good teaching planning.The English majors are going to be teachers in the future. Someday they will stand on the platform in the front of classroom. They will be models to students. Their pronunciation is important. Hence, the author hopes that they can pay more attention to the pronunciation teaching in the future. As time is limited the author can not study deeply. Hence, it may not be sufficient to explain the relationship between the pronunciation and four skills. However, with more and more studies devoting to this subject and the improvement of the research methodology, it is likely that a more comprehensive and integrated result will unfold before us.ReferencesBurstall, C. 1975. Factors affecting foreign-language learning: a consideration of some relevant research findings. Language Teaching and Linguistics Abstracts.8：5-125 Channell, J. 1998. Psycholinguistic considerations in the study of L2 vocabulary acquisition in R. Carter and M.McCarthy(eds.). pp. 83-96Ellis, R. 1999. Understanding Second Language Acquisition [M]. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.Esling, J. and Wong, R. 1983. V oice quality setting and the teaching of pronunciation’TESOL Quarterly 17/1:89-95Gardner, R & W, Lambert. 1972. Attitude and Motivation in Second Language Learning Rowley [M]. Mass: Newbury House.Gimson, A. C. 1989. An Introduction to Pronunciation of English [M]. London Edward Arnold.Tarone, E. 1974. Speech perception in second language acquisition: a suggested model. Language Learning 24/2: 223-33.Tricia Hedge. Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. [M]. Oxford University Press.Van Weeren, J. & Theunissen. 1987. Testing pronunciation: An application of generalizability theory. Language Learning [M]. (37): 109-122.WangQiang. 1999. Some Thoughts on the 21st Century Foreign Language Curriculum R eform for Nine-Year Compulsory Education. [M]. Foreign Language Teaching in School (7&8).刘倩，2003，《初中英语新课程教学法》[M]，北京，开明出版社Appendix Ⅰ英语语音学习调查问卷亲爱的同学：你好！为了提高英语学习效率，我们特进行英语高一年级的英语语音学习调查，你所提供的宝贵意见将会对以后的语音教学提供参考。