An Investigation Into Phonetic Teaching In Vocational School English Listening Class

In recent years, English, as a major subject, has been paid much attention to, so has the English teaching in vocational schools. However, vocational schools, whose aim is to foster blue-collar workers, are different from high schools. They focus more on practical communication skills in language education, which is largely to help improve students’listening and speaking abilities. After fifteen years of English teaching, the author wants to begin researching the very basic of the language----the phonetics, the role of basic phonetic knowledge teaching in vocational school English listening classes, and looks forward to results that can help improve the listening ability of vocational school students by way of phonetic training.In this research, the author concerns about the status, principle, assignment, actuality and other main problems existing in vocational schools. Accordingly, the author suggests the importance and necessity of basic phonetic knowledge in listening teaching. Mainly from the aspect of the teacher’s teaching, the author makes a theoretical study and practical exploration in how to infiltrate phonetic training in vocational school English listening teaching.In order to survey how the vocational school students handle the phonetic knowledge in listening class and the problems in both the teachers and students in usage of phonetic knowledge, the author made a questionnaire for all the English teachers in vocational schools of Nankai District and some students in Nan Kai Vocational School, then stated the results. The results show that, there was serious shortage in the teaching of basic phonetic knowledge in English lessons. In the English class of vocational school, the phonetic teaching was in a neglected position for a long period of time.In order to verify the important role of basic phonetic knowledge in the teaching of listening, the author has made the two classes in major of "Logistics" as objects, who took part in the comparative experiments of one semester. The final result indicated that the experimental class benefited from the "basic phonetic training". It is proved that basic phonetic knowledge teaching can effectively improve the students’ listening ability. At the same time the basic phonetic training is more beneficial to listening activity than vocabulary teaching.In addition, the author gave some advice on vocational school listening teaching in the future according to the results of the research, and wished to devote something that can help improve teaching of listening.