An Empirical Research On Negative Transfer Of Chinese Pinyin On English Phonetics Learning For Low-grade Students In Primary Schools

Phonetics is the foundation of language learning.In our country,students lack the environment to use English.In the process of learning English phonetics,students are inevitably influenced by the pronunciation of their mother tongue,which is not conducive to the establishment of phonetics rules of the second foreign language.Under the background of contemporary time,more and more students begin to learn English in the first grade of primary school.In the process of learning English phonetics,they often transfer the pronunciation habit of Chinese pinyin to English phonetics,resulting in negative transfer of their mother tongue.Through investigation and research,this paper discusses the phenomenon of negative transfer of Chinese pinyin on English phonetics learning and analyzes its in-depth reasons,so as to design relevant phonetics teaching strategies to reduce negative transfer,which has a positive impact on improving the English phonetics level of low-grade students.Based on the transfer theory and the contrastive analysis hypothesis,this paper explores the negative transfer of Chinese pinyin in learning English phonetics among the low-grade students in M primary school in Hangzhou,and proposes effective teaching strategies to reduce the negative transfer in order to improve students’ English phonetics level.This study aims to explore: 1)what are the main aspects of the negative transfer of Chinese pinyin on English phonetics learning for low-grade students in primary schools? 2)what teaching strategies can be adopted to effectively reduce or even avoid the negative transfer ?This study employed quantitative and qualitative methods.Sixty students from two classes of grade two in M primary school in Hangzhou were selected as the research subjects.One class was randomly chosen as experimental class(EC)and and the other control class(CC).Through the pre-test,the author explored the aspects ofthe negative transfer of Chinese pinyin to English phonetics learning and analyzed the causes of the negative transfer.With the interview for English teachers and relevant literature,the author designed teaching strategies to reduce the negative transfer and improve students’ English phonetics level.During the experiment,the EC adopted the new English phonetics teaching strategies,while the CC adopted the traditional English phonetics teaching method.Finally,the results of the oral tests were analyzed to verify the effectiveness of the phonetics teaching strategies adopted in the experiment.At present,the research of the negative transfer of Chinese pinyin on English phonetics learning mainly focuses on the theoretical level,but seldom involves the empirical research.Therefore,this paper conducts empirical research through oral tests and interviews to explore the negative transfer of Chinese pinyin on English phonetics learning and which phonetics teaching strategies can be adopted to reduce the negative transfer.It is found that: 1)there is negative transfer from Chinese pinyin to English phonetics learning for lower-grade students in primary schools.In terms of segmental transfer,the negative transfer occurs on two aspects: phonemes vacancy and incomplete correspondence of phonemes.2)teachers can adopt effective English phonetics teaching strategies to reduce the negative transfer.Based on the research findings,this paper puts forward some suggestions on English phonetics teaching for primary school English teachers.