An Empirical Study On The Pronunciation Proficiency Of Non-english Majors From Rural Areas In Hebei Province

Pronunciation is a basic element of any language. The important role of pronunciation cannot be neglected in English language learning. However, the pronunciation proficiency of the non-English majors from rural areas is relatively low, which hampers their English Learning. As more than 70% of the students in Agricultural University of Hebei are from rural areas, it is necessary to pay more attention to the pronunciation learning of those students and investigate the factors that hinder the improvement of their pronunciation proficiency. The main objective of this study is to identify the influence of first language, namely Mandarin Chinese, on the pronunciation proficiency of the students and understand how the English phonology is taught in rural areas. It is found that the pronunciation errors made by those students have a close relationship with the speakers'mother tongue, Mandarin Chinese, both at the segmental level and the suprasegmental level. By comparison, their errors in connected speech or the prosodic features are more serious than those in the segmental sounds. Meanwhile, the data collected for understanding how the English phonology has been taught in rural areas in the past several years shows that teachers do not pay enough attention to pronunciation teaching and concern the segmental sounds much more than the sentence stress, rhythm and intonation. This thesis suggests that in practical English teaching, pronunciation should be attached more importance.