The Phenomenon Of Negative Transfer In Learning English Phonetics And Teaching Method

The phonetic coordinate axis of one's mother tongue plays a leading role for foreign language learners, especially for adult foreign language learners. They always compare their mother tongue, especially their local language, with those of the foreign language again and again. Then conditioned reflex can be formed so that people can blurt out and speak the foreign language fluently. So in teaching a foreign language, we teachers must make full use of the learners' phonetic coordinate axis, especially their local language, and compare the pronunciation and intonation of the two languages involved in order to improve the phonetic teaching efficiently. So foreign language teachers and educational experts have attached great importance to contrastive analysis since Lado used it in teaching.The thesis makes full use of the theory of phonetics and the theory of transfer in second language learning and deals with negative transfer of Wuhan dialect in segmental and suprasegmental levels to secondary school students when they learn English pronunciation and intonation. By comparing and contrasting the pronunciation and intonation of Wuhan dialect and English, the thesis also discusses in theory the negative transfer of Wuhan dialect to secondary school students when they learn English pronunciation and intonation; In the meanwhile, on the basis of theoretical comparison and contrast by experiment and investigation etc., the thesis tries to find the main points in teaching English pronunciation and intonation and then tries to find the teaching method to overcome the negative transfer of Wuhan dialect so that we English teachers can predict the difficulties in teaching English pronunciation and intonation and improve the quality of teaching. Finally, the thesis puts forward an effective method to overcome the negative transfer of Wuhan dialect-synthetic-analytic method. And the feasibility and advantages of this method have been tested and verified by the experiment.The thesis falls into eight parts with introduction and conclusion. In chapter I, that is introduction, is briefly about the negative transfer of the mother tongue in learning a foreign language and the negative transfer of Wuhan dialect's phonetics to the English pronunciation and intonation; In Chapter II, the theories are based on phonetics and transfer in learning a second language, mainly on negative transfer; In Chapter III, the thesis states the importance of teaching English pronunciation and intonation. Chapter IV gives the standard pronunciation of English (Received Pronunciation or R.P.) and Chinese (Standard Chinese Pronunciation); Chapter V presents the differences of Wuhan dialect compared with Standard Chinese Pronunciation; In Chapter VI, the thesis compares and contrasts the pronunciation and intonation of English and Wuhan dialect in segmental and suprasegmental levels and concludes the difficulties and mistakes because of negative transfer of Wuhan dialect; In Chapter VII, the author of the thesis puts forward a teaching method to overcome the negative transfer of Wuhan dialect in teaching English pronunciation and intonation - synthetic-analytic method. By testing, we know listening to a lot of foreign language and simulation are good for phonetic learning. This is consistent with the principle of phonetic acquisition. Of course, simulation must be instructed by phonetic theories. In addition to listening, simulation and practice over and over, comparing and contrasting the pronunciation and intonation of Wuhan dialect and English plays an important role to Wuhan secondary school students in their learning English pronunciation and intonation. The last part is the conclusion of the whole thesis.