An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Shangzhou Dialect On The Acquisition Of English Pronunciation

Learner's knowledge of first language, including pronunciation, has strong influence on second language acquisition. Shangzhou, a district in the south part of Shaanxi province, has its own system of dialect with striking characteristics in pronunciation. To most learners of English there, what influences their SLA is right their dialect. Many of them speak English with strong accent and some even make pronunciation errors. Whether the mistakes are related to dialect and how dialect is transferred into English will be the focus of this research.Based on contrastive analysis and error analysis, this study takes Shangzhou dialect as the object and analyzes its influence on the acquisition of English pronunciation for students in this area from the aspect of L1 transfer. With the help of the relevant studies by other scholars, by describing the phonetic features of Shangzhou dialect and contrasting segmental systems between Shangzhou dialect and English, this study aims to find out the similarities and differences between the two systems, so as to put forward problems and propose hypothesis ---- whether or not Shangzhou dialect can be transferred into English pronunciation, how this transfer happens and how to overcome the negative transfer.From the empirical study, we find Shangzhou dialect does not interfere with English pronunciation all the time. Its function is both positive and negative. In the course of the experiment, positive transfer will be enhanced and the negative transfer should be reduced. By contrasting the two pronunciation tests before and after the experiment, we find that participants'error frequency is obviously lowered and their score increased after the experiment. This suggests that imitating with prior knowledge of pronouncing methods and skills is an effectual way to improve participants'pronunciation. This study not only specifies the study object of L1 transfer into dialect, but also proposes some effectual ways to overcome the negative transfer of dialect, which is both beneficial to teachers and students as well.