Problems and Strategy of Teaching English Pronunciation in Junior Middle School英语毕业论文.doc

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1、Problems and Strategy of Teaching English Pronunciation in Junior Middle SchoolIntroduction English teaching in our country pays too much attention to the examination and paper marks. Even the professionals who have taught English for years misunderstand about the subject. Ordinary English teachers

2、in junior middle school with a heavy examination burdend(担子) on their shoulders hold that phonetic（语音的） teaching has few marks in examination and it can only help to learn, and consequently only need spare a little time and energy in learning it. This is not a good idea because pronunciation learnin

3、g is English learning itself. It has the same importance as we learn English grammar, reading comprehension in the whole process of English acquisition（获得）. It is not only to perfect and study phonetics, but also the path leading to mastering English. It is a useful weapon and with it we can fight a

4、nd overcome many difficulties in learning English. If we master and familiar with correct and natural English pronunciation, we would have a good memory of typical English sentences and new words. So it is natural and necessary for students with a correct and natural English pronunciation. Why is En

5、glish pronunciation teaching so important in English language teaching? There are five main reasons about it.a) The sound is the first nature of language. Language is a tool of communication. Only through vocal organs sending out voices, only depending on the sounds of the language, people finish th

6、e goal of communication with each other. In linguistics, the definition of language is “a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication”. It has two salient features: One is sound; the other is meaning. It is the base of language learning. Phonetics is an essential part of language

7、because it gives language a definite form. Language performs its function through language sounds. Speech without sound is impossible. Letters only serve to represent spoken words in a writing form. But words pronounced or written in isolation cannot express complete thoughts. Complete thoughts can

8、only be expressed in sentences consisting of words put together according to the grammar rules of the language and pronounced with the proper intonation. As a means of communication by words of mouth, language is used in oral speech and in being read aloud. Therefore, in order to make oneself easily

9、 understood while expressing ones own or other peoples thoughts in any language, one must be able to pronounce sentences in that language correctly. One must have a good pronunciation in order to understand other people easily when they speak or read aloud. This is proved by the well-known fact that

10、 the better we pronounce a foreign language, the easier we understand it when we hear it.So a teacher of a foreign language must be able to teach the correct pronunciation of that language. A teacher untrained in phonetics is as useless as a doctor untrained in anatomy( 解剖学) . Facts show that teache

11、r must repeat the sounds many times. Without any knowledge of pronunciation and intonation, the teaching result will be unsatisfactory. So one of the principal aims of a foreign language teacher is to master both the pronunciation of the language he or she is going to teach and the method of teachin

12、g this pronunciation. To achieve this aim, he or she must have a clear idea of what a good pronunciation is, what are the difficulties in acquiring it, and how these difficulties can be overcome.b) Phonetics is the clothes of language. Acquiring the beautiful and correct sounds of one language helps

13、 acquire the words and learn the grammar of it, and also helps improve the ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing, especially speaking and listening. It helps to acquire the proper manner of exchanging thoughts and feelings effectively.c) Phonetics is the material existence 存在of languag

14、e. English pronunciation teaching is the beginning and first step of English teaching, especially in junior middle schools. We must have a basic ground of English learning in this period. If we ignore it, there would be much troubles and confusion in the future of learning.d) There is a quite differ

15、ence between English and Chinese. We can say that English is a kind of hearing language, and our Chinese is the language both hearing and seeing. In short. English put much emphasis 着重、强调on sounds so we should focus on sounds to learn.e) Phonetics is also the main element of stylistics. To judge a p

16、iece of writing, sounds beauty is an important standard. If we could not put this notion in students brains, and let them know what is good or bad of the sounds in English, students were losing one of the rules to check the nature of English language. They would not have known how to distinguish a g

17、ood article from a bad one. Good writings are the perfect combination of the sound and meaning.For the reasons mentioned above. We fully understand that phonetics is a sharp weapon to fight language. Correct pronunciation will keep correct track of words spelling in brain. It is a whole and total at

18、tack. It adds another stimulation to memorize new words. The sounds stimulation is more effective than just writing new words again and again. Learning is understanding and memory. Reading aloud helps us understand and memorize more effectively.To learn their mother tongue, babies acquire first from

19、 sounds of their language. And to learn a foreign language, students also should start from this basis. In English, phonetics has a close relationship with its words spelling and grammar. Not only to master the skills of listening and speaking, but also grammar and words, to master English language

20、wholly and totally, have we needed phonetic learning. We need to make students familiar with English sounds. To master a language, is to master the sounds of the language first. Without sounds is without learning English. Every phoneme in English decides its meaning. Mistaken pronunciation leads to

21、misunderstanding. For example: sheep and ship are two different words, one is “sheep (羊)”; the other is “ship（船）” decided by the length of the vowel. “Bed（床）”and “bad（坏）are decided by the opening height of mouth. And there are words “eyes” and “ice”; “singing” and “sin”. If we pronounced them in a w

22、rong way, we would understand the meaning mistakenly. Pronouncing the word right or wrong influences we hear others words correctly or not. The difficulties in hearing are often caused by our incorrect pronunciation. The difficulties of hearing sometimes arise from that we confuse the difference bet

23、ween spoken language and written words. We need to know that there is distance between them and the form of their records is different. For example: “Pick it up”, “Think it over”, “What did you eat?” and “You should tell us” have assimilation and elision. If we read according to the written words, t

24、here would have problems of hearing.Of course, the importance of English pronunciation teaching is far from mentioned above. As a kind of spelling language, there are many aspects in English as grammars and vocabulary greatly influenced and controlled by sounds. Different from Chinese, if we say, me

25、aning of Chinese language can be found in reading, and then meaning of English can be found in hearing. English word “supper” is from the sounds of taking the soup, and then there come “slurp”, “sip”, “slop”, “sloppy” and “slob”. According to the change of sound, we find some rules of how the irregu

26、lar verbs change: meet met met, leave left left, and sleepsleptslept which belong to one group. And then there is another: thinkthoughtthought, bringbroughtbrought. And more: teachtaughttaught, singsangsung, ringrangrung, drinkdrankdrunk, beginbeganbegun, drivedrovedriven, riseroserisen, writewrotew

27、ritten, and riderode ridden.Furthermore, rhythm and rime play their roles in English language, too. English sentence is based on the rhythm of stressed and unstressed pattern. In many cases, this rhythm pattern decides the formation of English sentence. English people say: “Wrap it up” or “Wrap up t

28、he book”, not usually saying “Wrap up it” or “Wrap the book up”. They say: “give me the book” or “give it to me”, they do not usually say: “Give me it”. Grasp the correct English pronunciation will help us a lot in learning grammar and memorizing words well. Phonetics has a close relation with gramm

29、ar. The different function of grammar produces different reading sounds even of the same words. For example, the verb “read” plays the role as present indefinite tense and infinitive read as ri:d, but as past indefinite tense and past participle is read as red. The word “house” as a noun read as hau

30、s, but as a verb read as hauz. The relation between pronouncing and word formation shows in prefix. The word “correct” adds “in” in front means the opposite. But with the change of the first letter of the words, the prefix will change. So we got the following English words: “imperfect”, “irresponsib

31、le”, and “illegal”. Intonation develops in the same way. The same sentence with different intonation shows different feelings and attitude. If we use the rising tone to say: “Whats your name?” It carries the meaning of informal and politeness. But saying in the falling tone it means formal and offic

32、ial. It is unimaginable that we communicate effectively without the correct tone. Sometimes English people use rising tone in a special question.Teaching practices show that the standard of teaching pronunciation decides not only the students quality of pronunciation, but also the whole process of t

33、heir English learning. If they have a good pronunciation, the process will go smoothly and successfully. If not, there will be lots of barriers and difficulties in their learning afterwards. Many students are frightened by English only because they form a bad habit of learning. They ignore the sound

34、 side of English language and gradually lose their confidence, and finally they lose their faith and give up. So grasping the phonetics is grasping the core of learning and teaching. It is the basic ground of teaching English in junior middle school.In present situation, the textbook of new target f

35、or juniors absorbs a large amount of dialogues and texts from real American life. The only aim is to let students catch up with the time and with the ability of intercultural communication. But the examination being pulls them to the opposite way. This is one important reason why we ignore pronuncia

36、tion teaching. One reason is phonetics are invisible and our natives have the rooted faith in that “Seeing is believing”; the other is there is no place in exam. Students knowledge and practice of phonetics are quite poor. It is natural that they can not pronounce well. But without this ability they

37、 are unable to spell and memorize words. So our teachers teaching is very tiring. With great amount of energy and time but coming little effects, the phonetics teaching directly harms the quality of middle school English teaching.English teachers in junior middle school must realize this and change

38、it, and put the phonetics teaching into focus. If we were not strict with students phonetic training and education, we would always fall into the passive position. “Professor A. C. Gimson notes that to speak any language a person must know nearly 100% of its phonetics, while only 50-90% of its gramm

39、ar and 1% of the vocabulary may be sufficient ”. I1. The Basic Content of Teaching English Pronunciation in Junior Middle School Not like babies grasping their mother tongue, students in junior middle school have more intelligence we can use. We should use it to avoid wasting time and energy at the

40、first step of their English learning. We can tell students the main organs of speech and their functions. We should give them some common sense of pronunciation to avoid their blindness in pattern drills. The following senses are needed: the relationship between pronunciation and the vocal organs, t

41、he movement of lips and tongue, the stress and relaxation of muscles, the vibration of vocal cord, the air through mouth or nose, and the length of the sound. Under these rational guiding, students will imitate actively and teach themselves timely. But training is not studying. If students can imita

42、te correctly and pronounce without difficulty, there will be no need of explanation.a) Teaching Vowels and ConsonantsTeaching VowelsAt first we must put emphasis on the position of the tongue (especially the front vowels). The aim is let students know the position: front, middle, behind; and high, m

43、iddle and low positions of the tongue where the voices are produced. The mouth is quite a small space but 20 vowels are produced here. A little change will cause the change of vowel from one to another. Take the difficult vowel for Chinese students as an example: the difference of i: and i is not on

44、ly longer or shorter of the time, but the height of the tongue involved producing these sounds. That means the tongue position (higher or lower) joining in to produce vowels; only about 1mm difference will decide which is which. Tongue is a soft thing which can be stressed and unstressed. We should

45、fully fix the position of the tongue to produce vowels. Moving is the other characteristic of the tongue. We can use the movement of the tongue to make diphthongs with high quality. Besides, we need to emphasize the form of the lip especially the behind vowels. Take a and as an example, although the

46、re is difference of the position of the tongue, but the form of the lips and the stress of the tongue muscle are more important in producing these two vowels.When teaching vowels, we can use the picture of the form of the mouth, or the model of the tongue movement in the mouth, or multi-media. Point

47、ing to the place and movements and let students do it themselves. There is a great difference between English vowels and its phonemes(音素，英语有48个). In teaching, we can let them support each other. Thus we need to teach single sound in word companioned by rules of spelling. But we need not tell student

48、s the terms of open and closed syllables, and showing students the pronouncing mode on the blackboard is enough. Let students have abundant materials to feel at first. Then let them sum up the rules themselves. We can tell them at a proper time afterwards. At the beginning of phonetics learning we c

49、an show them in this way: ei came face late bag flag capei day say waya: car star dark Teaching ConsonantsFirst we must let students make it clear that if their vocal cords vibrating or not while they sound the voiced consonants. It separates breathed consonants from the voiced ones. For example, there are pairs like “pig” and “big”; and “dark” and “dug”. We can let students touch their larynx(喉部) to feel if their vocal cords vibr