Analysis Of The English Segment Pronunciation Features Of Undergraduates Majoring In English

This thesis mainly studies the pronunciation status of English segments, namely, the vowels and consonants, read by undergraduates majoring in English. Combining experimental phonetics and other acoustic theories and knowledge with the description of vowels and consonants in traditional English phonetics, the thesis observes and analyzes the English segment (vowels and consonants) pronunciation of undergraduates majoring in English through making a comparison between the subjects' pronunciation and RP. Through the observation of the acoustic characteristics of consonants and vowels, such as spikes, fills, voice bars, VOT and formant patterns, on the spectrogram, the thesis analyzes the subjects' pronunciation features of English consonants from the aspects of the places and manners of articulation and voicing states in different phonetic environments; it also analyzes the subjects' pronunciation features of English vowels from the aspects of tongue locations and the vowels' length of time in different phonetic environments. The common segmental features and the existing problems of the pronunciation of the undergraduates majoring in English are summarized, the tentative exploration of the causes is made and the suggestions for ways of solving the pronunciation-problems are given with the hope that there can be some enlightenment and help for English majors about learning pronunciation through this study.This thesis researches the subjects' pronunciation of English vowels and consonants only in word reading. Therefore, the results can represent the subjects' pronunciation situation only in their careful reading and can not completely show their pronunciation situation in spontaneous speech. Consideration and analysis of this point are needed in future studies so as to find out more comprehensive pronunciation situation of the undergraduates majoring in English.