Impacts Of The Dialect Of Sichuan And Chongqing Students On Their English Pronunciation Learning

The difference between the first language and the target language usually result in problems and errors in the learning of the target language, for during the process of establishing a new language system, the old, rooted language habits from the first language will get in the way of forming the new habits. This interference of the first language in phonetic learning is the most noticeable one. To have a sufficient understanding of the differences between languages, one has to make contrastive studies on the phonetic characteristics of the languages. Contrastive Study is closely related to foreign language teaching. It helps to discover and explain problems, analyze errors and overcome interference of the mother tongue transfer. Although lots of studies provide evidences to the fact that Contrastive Study is not omnipotent in explaining the difficulties in the process of foreign language learning, it is quite effective in the part of pronunciation learning. Therefore, Wang Li (1985) points out that in foreign language teaching"the most effective way is the comparative teaching of the Chinese language and the foreign language". Contrastive Phonology is always recognized by linguists as one of the most basic and effective sub-branch of contrastive linguistics. It explores the essential differences between languages through contrastive analysis on the formation and characteristics of the phonemic systems (namely, segmental phoneme), stress, intonation and other non-segmental elements (namely, suprasegmental features), and the syllable structures of the different languages.The author employs the approach of contrastive study and makes comparison of the differences between English and the Sichuan dialect. In the research, the author picks 82 sophoremores who speak Sichuan dialect as their mother tongue, concludes the most common mistakes they make, finds the beneath causes, which lay a solid foundation for the learning and teaching of English pronunciation.This dissertation comprises six chapters. Chapter One serves as an introduction, which includes the importance and necessity of the study and the organization of the dissertation.Chapter Two is about the Literature Review. It briefly introduces some basic knowledge about phonetics and phonology, reviews the great contributions the former researchers and scholars made, and contract the Sichuan dialect and English from the level of segmental phonology.Chapter three is the Theoretical Foundation part. This part expatiates the definitions and historical development of language transfer, classifies the two kinds of language transfer and pays special attention to the transfer on English segmental phonology.Chapter Four is the Methodology part, which introduces the method the research adopts, the participants, the instrument, and the result.Chapter Five is the most important part of the dissertation, which concludes and summarizes the commonest problems that the students who speak Sichuan dialect as their mother tongue have, and puts forward the implications behind the findings.Chapter Six is a conclusion, which points out that the contrastive study between English and Sichuan dialect plays a very important role in facilitating the foreign language teaching, and puts forward the limitations.