A Study Of Effects Of Dialect On English Learners' Pronunciation In Higher Vocational Colleges

Language is composed of three elements: phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Phonetics study is the first and fundamental step in the attempt to master the target language. It is also a key factor to improve learners'ability of listening and speaking. For English learners, whether one's English is standard or not depends on the mastery of his English phonetics to a certain degree.However, the teaching and learning of English phonetics is a comparatively weak point in higher vocational colleges. Most of the students are from rural areas where they lack Putonghua (PTH) environment so that their pronunciation habits with strong accents are virtually brought into English learning, leading to the fact that their pronunciation is far from satisfaction with Received Pronunciation (RP). Therefore, it's very necessary to carry out the research on the influence of Chinese dialects on students'English Phonetics so as to improve the language outlook of the students in higher vocational colleges. In this dissertation, Hebei dialect is taken as an example, aiming at exploring how students'Hebei dialect influences their English pronunciation, and finding out effective learning strategies to avoid the dialect interference. It is hoped that the research can make a meaningful breakthrough for teaching and learning of English phonetics in higher vocational colleges.In this dissertation, the following research questions are designed: (1) Is Hebei dialect a key factor in affecting students'English phonetic acquisition in higher vocational colleges? (2) What similarities and differences are there among the sound systems of Hebei dialect, Putonghua and English? (3) Affected by Hebei dialect,what pronunciation problems both at segmental and suprasegmental levels do the research subjects have ? (4) And what are the possible solutions to the phonetics problems of learners in higher vocational colleges?The whole research is based on three linguistic theories: Language Transfer Theory, Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis and Affective Filter Hypothesis. It takes how Hebei dialect negatively influences the students'English phonetics as the breakthrough point, and takes freshmen with weak phonetics knowledge from a Vocational College of Foreign Languages in Hebei Province as research subjects. A contrastive study on the sound systems among Hebei dialect, PTH and RP is also clearly expounded. The approach for research is both qualitative and quantitative, and some specific methods of pronunciation test, interviews and tape recording are applied in this research.In order to solve the problems in the students'pronunciation, four main countermeasures are proposed in this dissertation, i.e. the contrastive analysis learning; emphasis of the affective factors; guarantee for necessary instruction time and proper teaching materials; and the effective teaching methods and techniques.The dissertation consists of six chapters which are arranged as follows:Chapter one mainly provides a general description of the research background, research purpose and research questions.Chapter two introduces some related theories, basic concepts, previous studies on English phonetic acquisition at home and abroad, and previous researches on the influence of Chinese dialects on students'English Phonetics.Chapter three mainly expounds on the general features of Heibei dialect's sound system, and presents a contrastive study between the sound systems of Hebei dialect and PTH and between those of Hebei dialect and RP.Chapter four illustrates the research design, concluding the subjects for research, research procedures, instruments to be used and data collection.Chapter five centers on some major English pronunciation problems which exist at two stages: segmental stage and suprasegmental stage. Some countermeasures are also offered.Chapter six mainly presents research findings, limitations and implications of the study.