English Strong And Weak Forms In Connected Speech And Their Application In Middle School English Teaching

English teaching in China's middle schools has long been plagued by the students' poor performance in listening and speaking. The present thesis, based on the following hypothesis, is attempted to demonstrate how to improve students' pronunciation from the perspective of the use of English strong and weak forms in connected speech:1. Many of our students are totally ignorant of the existence of the strong and weak forms of those structural/grammatical words in the English language, while the teachers themselves have neglected this same phenomenon or lacked adequate knowledge of that either.2. Learning the correct use of strong and weak forms helps enhance students' listening and speaking skills.3. The group of strong and weak forms of those structural/grammatical words is related to some other pronunciation phenomenon (i.e. accent, rhythm, similitude, assimilation, elision and sound-linking) in a given connected speech.4. The teaching of the related English strong and weak forms should get involved in both mechanical practice and meaningful training in context.The findings in this essay suggest that mere exposition to large amount of spoken materials is not enough and that instructions about the ways in which English is uttered by native speakers is also crucial to good pronunciation of English for both our school teachers and students.