Teaching Chinese College Students English Phonology

Lots of previous researches have investigated the role of L1 transfer in L2 acquisition, but the acquisition of L2 phonology,deeply influenced by L1,has not received its due attention.On the other hand,L2 pronunciation instructional designs should take into account not only the L2 forms and functions,but also the learners' phonological awareness,the appropriate development of which can help them become better managers of their own learning.But much uncertainty still exists concerning the effect of an L1-facilitated awareness-raising instructional approach on Chinese-speaking learners' acquisition of English phonology.Thus,a study was conducted to find out whether this approach is effective in teaching Chinese college students' English phonology.A six-week teaching experiment was conducted,in a between-subjects design.51 university sophomores majoring in Agronomy,from two classes,participated in the study. One of the classes was randomly selected as the experimental class,where the oral English course was given in an L1-facilitated awareness-raising approach.The other class was the control class receiving traditional lessons without any special treatment.17 students from the experimental class were selected to form the experimental group(EG).And 18 from the control class served as the control group(CG).All the other conditions of these two groups were controlled:the same initial level of English pronunciation,strength of motivation for learning English pronunciation,gender ratio,teacher,teaching materials, homework,and length of class time.Data were collected from a motivation questionnaire, and English pronunciation pre-test and post-test,and analyzed with non-parametric tests.The result showed that the EG made a significantly greater progress than did the CG in learning English pronunciation.The result indicated that the L1-facilitated awareness-raising approach could effectively improve the learning of English pronunciation of Chinese college students.The result suggests that it is very helpful if teachers use modern technology,try to compare L1 with L2 and design the tasks that are interesting and involve all the students. And the use of a journal for every student's phonological development is necessary for a track of their pronunciation and a purposeful learner-oriented instruction.