Shanxi Southern Area College Students' English Pronunciation Errors At Segmental Level And Phonetic Remediation

The acquisition of phonetics plays a leading role during the entire language acquisition, however, pronunciation teaching does not obtain deserved attention. (Derwing, 2005;Mirza, J. S., 1987) According to many a research, Chinese EFL learners, especially those from regional areas, feel English pronunciation a great headache for them. The current study tests thirty non-English majors from North University of China, all of whom are freshmen from Yuncheng region, and finds that those who use dialects frequently have a trend to commit more pronunciation errors. Apart from the errors most Chinese EFL learners usually commit, their errors, in particular at segmental level, have other unique features, such as the deviation of oral cavity's opening extent, mispronunciation of nasal, adding of lateral, mispronunciation of semi-vowel and so on. On the basis of comparision of Mandarin Chinese with Yuncheng dialect, it is predicted that the errors are influenced by the dialect greatly.Under the guidance of phonetics and phonology as well as transfer theories, the present research discusses the phonetic transfer of the dialect by using of contrastive analysis (CA) and error analysis (EA). Through questionnaire, recording and semi-structured interview, the data are analyzed to pursue the origin of the errors and to search for the phonetic difficulties and the regular errors. Afterwards remediation aimed at correcting particular errors is conducted. In the second recording, it is apparent that there is great improvement of the participants'pronunciation after accepting systematic phonetic training, imitating native speakers, minimal pairs drills and other approaches. More obvious achievement would be gained but for the limited two-month traing time. In view of this, it is effective and significant to work out objective remediation in accordance with the unique features of the EFL learners in different reginoal areas.The study offers as well teachers in other regional areas references to improve learners'pronunciation and to enhance pronunciation teaching.The data are collected and analyzed merely at segmental level, therefore, in order to make the research more systematic and more complete, relevant study of suprasegmental phonology is suggested to be carried out.