Chinese English Majors’ Awareness Of Rhythm Pattern

Rhythm pattern is one of the most significant characteristics in prosody.Chinese and English belong to different types of languages,for the former is considered to be the stress-time.d language;on the contrary,the latter is regarded as the syllable-timed language,so each of them demonstrates distinct rhythmic features,and there are quite a lot of different aspects among these two languages.Due to such huge dissimilarities between these two rhythmic patterns,it is found that Chinese EFL learners are more likely to have difficulties in producing English rhythm pattern and therefore,it is proposed that Chinese English majors will confront rhythmic problems as well.What kind of English rhythm pattern do Chinese English majors produce?Do they have awareness of English rhythm pattern?According to these questions,this thesis is going to measure and analyze Chinese English majors’rhythm pattern,so as to get a conclusion about whether they have awareness of English rhythm pattern while acquiring English.The chief subjects are Chinese English majors from Shaanxi Normal University,and two native English speakers are included as well.With the key purpose of finding out whether Chinese English majors have rhythmic awareness,based on phonetics theory,this thesis employs six rhythm metrics in total.As a result,we can have a clear perception of the rhythmic pattern of Chinese English majors,and understand whether they have awareness of English rhythm pattern,which,in the end,provide acoustic parameters for evaluation model of oral rhythm.and suggestion of English phonetic teaching for Chinese English teachers.This thesis firstly divides eighteen Chinese subjects into three groups,LG,MG,HG according to their English degrees,then it mainly employs%V and AC,Varco-C and Varco-V,and nPVI and rPVI to compare values between LG,MG,HG and native speakers.After the contrast,it is obviously observed the distinction between Chinese students and English-speaking persons,meanwhile,we can also see the characteristics of LG,MG and HG,and Chinese male students and female ones.With the results,it becomes necessary to find out the detail reasons causing the consequences,which,finally,are discussed from the points of vowel reduction,English proficiency,the impact of Chinese CV-structure.,vowel duration,and speech rate.To sum up,because of the lack of vowel reduction in Chinese and the complex syllable structure of English,Chinese English majors are struggling with the English rhythmic pattern and some of them cannot master it very well.What’s more,due to various years of learning English,Chinese English majors who are in the first grade and third Grade generally have relatively weak awareness of English rhythm pattern compared with those who are in senior.Above all,the majority of Chinese English majors,though they have studied English for at least ten years,are still affected by their native language,so their English rhythmic pattern have the characteristics as an interlanguage.