The Phonetic Transfer Problems Of English Majors In Higher Vocational And Technical Colleges And The Teaching Strategies

In the reform of educational structure in China recently, vocational education is being focused and higher vocational education is developing rapidly. With the increase of student enrollment in Higher Vocational Technical College (HVTC), the quality of students is declining in the meantime and especially the students who major in English have a low proficiency in English language. It was found that HVTC English majors generally encounter more difficulties and generate more transfer errors in English phonetics than those in comprehensive universities and colleges. Consequently, phonetics teaching and learning in HVTC becomes a hard nut to crack. As is known to all, phonetics is the primary medium in communication, and poor phonetic performance hinders the development of students'other skills, especially speaking and listening. Therefore, phonetics teaching and learning must be paid more attention to. However, up to now, the study on the phonetic perspective of HVTC is scarce and the current researches on phonetics have tended to focus on the macroscopic aspect, and lack the specific phonetic teaching strategies. There is limited combination between phonetic transfer and practical teaching in research. For the above reasons this paper intends to explore the HVTC English majors'phonetic transfer problems and recommend to utilize the positive transfer and at the same time avoid the negative transfer in phonetic teaching. It is believed to be an efficient and effective teaching method to solve the Chinese transfer in English phonetics learning.Based on language transfer and phonetics theories, and starting from the coexistence of both positive and negative transfer of Chinese in the learning of English phonetics, the paper studies the problems that the English majors in HVTC encounter in learning English phonetics, and suggests the corresponding feasible solutions to overcome negative transfer and promote positive transfer so as to improve the teaching efficiency.By means of experiments and questionnaire and by using comparative analysis method, the author studies the positive transfer and negative transfer which are related to Chinese phonetics on segmental and super segmental features. The purpose of the research is to find out the problematic English sounds, intonation, and stress etc. and to offer some teaching strategies. And furthermore, it verifies that the strategies are feasible and practical and can improve students'phonetic performance.Through sixteen weeks'teaching and experimenting, it proves that far as the HVTC English majors are concerned, it is necessary to reinforce phonetic teaching and to adjust teaching strategies; it is feasible to help students to compare the similarities and differences between English and Chinese phonetic systems and to promote the acquisition of English phonetics. In addition, the phonetic teaching strategies adopted in the experimental class have produced remarkable results, and in the meantime initiated the subjects'interest in phonetic learning and activated the classroom atmosphere.