On Teaching English Majors’ Pronunciation: From Theory To Practice

In recent years, English learning is becoming popular in China increasingly. More andmore people realize the importance of English pronunciation in English study. For Englishmajors, the cultivation of pronunciation quality is especially important, which directly affectsthe study of other English courses. However, there are many factors to influence the Englishpronunciation study and the quality of the pronunciation teaching is not guaranteed. Therefore,it is a critical problem that how to take advantage of classroom to make the students payattention to pronunciation study and stimulate students’ learning interest to improve thequality of the students’ pronunciation.This thesis emphasize on the importance of English pronunciation teaching in the SecondLanguage Acquisition. The author took English education majors in Zibo Normal College asthe research subjects to analyze the English majors’ pronunciation problems at prsent andaffection factors. Meanwhile, the author put forward to a new teaching method based on thefunction of context in the English teaching---the teaching method in the real context ofsituation. In this study, the author applied the research methods of questionnaire andexperiment to collect relative data and information.To test the reliability and efficiency of this teaching method, the author has done anempirical research in two classes for fifteen weeks (one term). One is the experiment class;the other is the control class. Both of the two classes are taught with the same material and bythe same English teacher. The method of teaching pronunciation in the real context ofsituation is adopted in the experiment class, while the traditional teaching method in thecontrol class. To ensure that both of the two classes have no significant differences beforeexperiment, a pre-test was conducted at the very beginning. A post-test was given after fifteenweeks’ experiment to find out whether the method of teaching pronunciation in the realcontext of situation is more effective than the traditional method in improving theirpronunciation quality. The data analyzed by SPSS13.0indicated that the pronunciationproficiency in the experimental class was obviously higher than that in the control class.During one term teaching practice, the author proved the feasibility and validity of theteaching method in the real context of situation to cultivate English majors’ pronunciation quality. This research improved the students’ pronunciation proficiency, promoted theirlearning efficiency and gave some help to resolve their pronunciation problems. Meanwhile, italso gave guidance to the teachers’ pronunciation teaching.