The Effects Of Loudi Local Accent On The Junior Students' Acquisition Of English Phonetics

Loudi dialect is a branch of the Lou-Shao dialect in Hunan Province, and the accent in this area is quite difficult to master for most people, for it has a vast difference from not only the Putonghua, but also the other accents in Hunan province. Because of the negative transfer, the students in this area can not correctly distinguish the difference of some phonemes between Loudi accent and other languages, and it directly influences the students to learn, accept and master the phonemes of the target language. Therefore, it is necessary for us to pay special attention to this kind of obstacle in the English study because of the dialect, radically reclaim the incorrect pronouncing habit, and then establish a good pronunciation basis for the English learners in Loudi.The participants of the study are 20 first-year students from two junior middle schools in Louxing District in Loudi. The research was conducted by means of questionnaire, tape recordings, face-to-face interview, and classroom observation. Through correlation analyses of the data, the writer found the similarities and differences between Loudi phonemes, Chinese Putonghua and English Language in respect of manner of articulation and place of articulation. In that way, the influences of Loudi local accent on the acquisition of English phoneme are discovered, and those errors caused by the negative influences are corrected. The results of the research are helpful for EFL learners of Loudi to acquire accurate English phonemes. Meanwhile, it can also provide quite useful information for EFL learners in other areas of China.The research results show that, Loudi accent does have some effects on the Loudi students'acquisition of English Phonetics. Loudi students have few difficulties in pronouncing the phonemes which both exist in Loudi accent and English such as the voiceless consonants/p/,/t/,/k/and some pure vowels such as /(?)/,/e/,/i/, etc. However, on the other hand, the differences between Loudi accent and English phonemes do influence the students'correct pronunciation. For example, for consonants, Putonghua phonemes like sh, ch, zh are respectively pronounced as s, c and z in Loudi accent, which influences the pronunciation of the English phonemes of /∫/ and /t∫/ for Loudi students; and the phoneme f which does not exist in Loudi accent, has also influenced Loudi students' pronunciation of the English phonemes /f/ and /v/; As for some phonemes like/3/,/d3/,/tr/,/dr/, /θ/ and /(?)/, which can not be found both in Putonghua and Loudi accent, so many students have great difficulty in pronouncing them. For vowels, because of the habits of pronunciation in accent, Loudi students may easily replace the diphthongs/ai/and /ei/ with pure vowels, and the English phonemes which can not be found in Loudi accent like /(?)/ and /(?)/ are quite easy to be confused.