People learning English all know that the difficulties in English are not the grammar and vocabulary, but pronunciation and phonetics. This is because when we learn English, we may easily be affected by the influence of mother tongue, mandarin or dialects habit. According to Mr. Sue bur (Ausubel 158), the cognitive structure migration theory, it is easy to find that there are also positive transfer and negative transfer between Chinese pinyin and English phonetics learning. When the native language habits, patterns and rules promote the learning of the second language. It is positive transfer; The opposite is as negative transfer.
Negative transfer usually refers to the interference or inhibiting effect that one kind of study on another kind of on learning. Negative transfer is usually shown as that a kind of learning makes another kind of learning required more time or increase the number of practice. Or it prevents to grasp another study of knowledge smoothly and correctly. Chinese and English are classified in different languages system. The differences in pronunciation is very outstanding. First of all, there is a greater difference between two languages on the system of phonemes, almost no exactly same phoneme pronunciation. Although some phonemes are similar; their organs of articulation also have some differences and easy to cause negative transfer in phonetics.
In the following chapters, I will analyze the specific influences of Huai’an dialect to English phonetics and causes of students’ pronunciation mostly based on these two theories.
2.3 Introduction to English phonetics
Phonetic teaching is an important content of language teaching. Natural and standard pronunciation, intonation will lay a good foundation for the effective oral communication. Phonetic course contains three parts: the pronunciation and correction of the English consonants and vowels, English language regulation and tone. Students should master English phonemes pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation by learning English, and gracefully apply learned knowledge in oral communication. The purpose of learning English phonetics is to use language, in order to communicate in English better. Students should understand English discourse, fluently express ideas and highlight key points. And then making the person heard clear, so as to help students lay a solid foundation in the development of English listening and speaking skills. Through phonetics learning to communicate more effectively.
When voicing vowels, sound track is shaking, exhaled air from mouth without any obstacles. It sounds very loud and clear. When voicing varies different vowels, tongue and lips have some changes, such as tongue placed before or later, high or low, lips opened or closed, round or flat, thus to change the the shape of airflow channel and adjust the airflow. It’s changing aims to voice different vowels. Vowels are pided into two categories: monophthong and diphthong. In the monophthong, by articulation, they can be pided into front vowels, middle vowels and back vowels. By the time of pronunciation, monophthong can be pided into long vowels and short vowels.
When voicing consonants, exhaled air through mouth or nasal have obstacle. This obstacle comes from the lips and teeth, tongue and teeth, and the friction between the tip of the tongue and the gum. When voicing consonants, the part formed block in the oral cavity is more nervous; exhaled airflow is stronger; sustained time is short, not clear and loud as vowels. According to the sound track, consonants are pided into voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. According to the pronunciation way, consonants are pided into plosive, fricatives, nasals, lateral and semi-vowels.
We can change the pitch to make tone up or down when speaking. We can also like a singer suddenly raise tone of the words. This rise or fall of tone is called intonation. Rising and falling tone is English basic tone. In addition, it also has falling-rising tone, rising-falling tone, rising - falling - rising tone and level tone, etc. The lifting process can be rapid or slow, and also can form different combinations. The speaker can express all kinds of information through intonation correctly.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn