A Study Of The Objective,content And Assessment Of College English Pronunciation Teaching

Pronunciation has been commonly acknowledged as an important component of language learning;however,it has not been awarded due attention as the other levels of language have within the field of foreign language teaching and research around the world.For quite a long time most colleges and universities in China have witnessed the absence of pronunciation courses or pronunciation teaching in their English curriculum system;and the pronunciation teaching offered in some universities can hardly be said of as satisfactory in terms of the effectiveness of teaching and learning.As relevant research has revealed,pronunciation teaching in China’s college English teaching has long adopted the theories and ideas of teaching English as a foreign language(shortened as EFL),which assumes a native English-speaking interlocutor,and has thus led to three prominent problems.Firstly,the traditional EFL pronunciation teaching goals which have been dominated by the Nativeness Principle take the mainstream English accent patterns as standard and assume that the students’ interlocutors in the future will be native English speakers(shortened as NES,with “non-native English speakers” shortened as NNES).Such goals,unrealistic,are cut off not only from Chinese English learners’ actual needs but also from the global fact that nowadays the NNES-NNES communications have outnumbered the NES-NNES ones.Especially,with the further implementing of the Belt and Road Initiatives,the people with whom Chinese people have to use English to talk are more and more likely from non-English-speaking countries.Secondly,the contents of college English pronunciation teaching fail to take into consideration the unteachability of some NES phonological features and the inevitability of some Chinese accent features fossilized in students’ English pronunciation.Besides,it is also neglected that Chinese accent features in learners’ English pronunciation that do not influence communicative intelligibility serve the positive function of expressing the speaker’s socio-cultural identity.The ignorance of these factors are the major cause of the low efficiency of the traditional EFL pronunciation teaching。Thirdly,the testing and assessment of pronunciation also follows the Nativeness Principle,taking as the standard NES phonological norms,especially that of the General British accent(GB)or the General American accent(GA)and assuming accuracy to be the main scoring criterion.These so-called mainstream NES accents,however,are only nebulous concepts since they can hardly be accurately defined or described.Therefore,the nativeness-oriented testing,in terms of its criteria,contents and methods,not only misleads pronunciation teaching but also is ineffective to reveal an objective and comprehensive picture of students’ pronunciation competence.What is worse,with the NES norms in mind,students tend to be over conscious of the “inaccuracy” of their pronunciation,which does harm to their confidence and initiative in speaking the language.The perspective of English as a Lingua Franca(shortened as ELF)follows,in sharp contrast with the perspective of EFL,the intelligibility principle.It takes English as “an additionally acquired language system which serves as a common means of communication for speakers of different first languages”(Jenkins et al.2011).Consequently,the ELF perspective completely differs from the EFL one with reference to such issues as the norm of English,the target context,the ownership of the language,the principles of teaching and so on.It has an astonishing inspiration of practical value for the use and teaching of English in China,especially in regard to the overhaul of the attitude towards and the views about English pronunciation(Gao 2015)and has won great attention in the field of English teaching and research in China(Wen 2012 b,etc.).However,the existing literature on ELF pronunciation teaching in China fails to give concrete pedagogical descriptions as to how to organize and carry out ELF pronunciation teaching in class,although they perfectly describe the desirable outcome of adopting the ELF model and bring up plenty of tentative suggestions.In view of that,this study,based on the findings of relevant empirical research at home and abroad,aims to solve the three above-mentioned prominent problems,exploring,from the perspective of ELF,how to organize and carry out college English pronunciation teaching in China by answering the following three key research questions:1.What are the applicable objectives for ELF pronunciation teaching in China?2.What are the applicable contents for ELF pronunciation teaching in China?3.How should testing and assessment be conducted for ELF pronunciation teaching in China?In answering the first research question,this study,refuting the infeasibility of the objectives set for traditional college English pronunciation teaching,argues that the core objectives of college ELF pronunciation teaching are to improve students’ English phonological intelligibility,to cultivate students’ confidence in their mother tongue accent variations of English(one aspect of confidence in their own culture)and to develop students’ phonological accommodation skills.A framework of classified objectives of ELF pronunciation teaching is accordingly constructed in line with Jenkins’ s Lingua Franca Core(shortened as LFC)and on the basis of the findings of existing studies on Chinese college students’ English pronunciation competency need analysis.In the process of answering the second research question,this study first reviews the major empirical research literature on the features of Chinese learners’ English pronunciation,sorting out high-risk phonological features,including the typical Chinese English variations that were commonly recognized in different studies,and the Chinese English variations that were proven to pose strong potential influence on international communicative intelligibility.The overlapping part of the two subcategories are listed as the typical,high-risk Chinese English phonological features.Then those features are examined with reference to Jenkins’ s LFC,1)to guarantee the teachability of the phonological items that are included in the contents for China’s college ELF pronunciation teaching,and 2)to make necessary adjustments to Jenkins’ s LFC,adding some new elements,those high-risk Chinese English phonological items that are not included in Jenkins’ s LFC while removing some elements of Jenkins’ s LFC,those that were proven to pose no problems to Chinese English learners.In this way,it can be guaranteed that depicted ELF pronunciation teaching contents are applicable for China’s college English learners and serve the classified objectives of ELF pronunciation teaching.In addition,detailed suggestions are given as to integrating the efforts to develop students’ phonological accommodation skills into the focal teaching content.The third research question focuses on testing and assessment in China’s college ELF pronunciation teaching.With a brand new definition of phonological error for ELF contexts of communication,this research proposes a set of testing and assessment principles oriented towards ELF communicative intelligibility for China’s college teaching context.This set of principles are established by referring to the existing validated modes and technologies of pronunciation testing and assessment on the one hand and the findings of investigation into China’s current situation in this area on the other.On the basis of the proposed working principles,this research proceeds to formulate the Chinese College ELF Pronunciation Testing and Assessment System,which brings together three types of pronunciation testing,namely,the diagnostic testing,the progress achievement testing and the terminal proficiency testing.The main purpose of developing this system is to make sure that the pronunciation testing and assessing are carried out in the ELF paradigm and the results not only provide diagnostic and feedback information,but also produce a positive washback effect for both teachers and students so that the ELF pronunciation teaching objectives can be accordingly achieved.This research presents a tentative way to combine the ELF pronunciation teaching paradigm and high-risk Chinese English phonological features,attempting to actually implement the ELF ideology in China’s college English teaching context.Its theoretical significance lies in that it,to a certain extent,is the first try of its kind,and thus helps promote the localization of ELF teaching and the study of English lingua franca core in China.The practical significance of this research lies in that it provides a tentative plan and rationale for further reform of college English pronunciation teaching in China.Especially,it provides some concrete and operable reference for the syllabus design,textbook compilation and teaching practice of English phonetics from the perspective of ELF.Hopefully,it can help free college English pronunciation teaching from the traditional curse of teaching English as a foreign language and effectively solve the problem of “time-consuming and inefficient” pronunciation teaching in China.