An Analysis Of Middle School Students’ Acquisition Of English Pronunciation

It is noted that languages serve as the tool for human communication and the bridge for people connecting with each other. To the author, language is more than an art because the users’beautiful and decent language will help them gain more respect from others. There are three elements-pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar which combine every language in the world. However, when learning English, people tend to ignore the aspect of pronunciation due to the special circumstances of English learning in China. Learners spend most time in learning vocabulary and grammar, especially in the phase of middle school. Therefore, there are various problems rising concerning English pronunciation in the phase.This thesis aims to investigate English pronunciation acquisition of middle school students in China. Through finding problems of student’s pronunciation, the thesis also tends to dig out the hidden elements which influence students’ pronunciation. Such an experimental, analytic and descriptive research will also provide some constructive suggestions for further English pronunciation learning and teaching.Experiments make this thesis more convincing and more accurate. The research contains three major steps:first, the author gets recording material of the subjects. Then the native speakers are asked to help score the subjects’overall acquisition in terms of different phonological aspects, such as segmental and suprasegmental parts. Second, the author tries to compare the production of native speakers and that of subjects with the help of Praat-a phonetic software. At the same time, the author tries to analyze the data from the perspective of acoustic phonetics. Thirdly, the author also designs a questionnaire so as to get more information about the factors which hinder the subjects’pronunciation development. After experiencing the three steps and applying some related theories, the overall acquisition situation will be revealed.The results indicate that the overall situation meets the basic pronunciation requirements put forward by Shanghai Education Department. Word reading is better than discourse reading. The reason that the subjects have done a worse job in prosodic aspect is mainly due to the differences between phonological system of mother tongue and that of English. L1negative transfer, attitude and motivation and some other elements which have been mentioned in the thesis are worth careful meditating. Some suggestions are also given based on the analysis.