The Error Analysis Of English Consonant Pronunciation Made By Chinese High-School Students

Language is a means of communication in everyday life. We know that speechsounds play a very important role in the transmission of information, and the ability ofspeaking English embodies the correctness of pronunciation. Failure in understandingthe distinctive features of phonemes in different languages will possibly lead to manyerrors in pronunciation.This thesis reports an analytic study of the main errors made by some ChineseEnglish learners who come from the six dialectal regions when they are pronouncingEnglish consonants. These senior students are all studying at the same high-school ofShanghai. As for the present research, due to the objective reasons, the Hakka familyis excluded, it only examines the pronunciation problems of60Chinese students, whoare taken from the representative cities of these six dialect families.The author uses the experimental research methodology to compare the majoracoustic features of English consonants produced by the Chinese learners with thoseproduced by the received pronunciation speakers. The results of data analysis revealthat senior high-school students with strong Chinese dialects such as those fromnorth-eastern and central China tend to reproduce some Chinese sounds in Englishpronunciation. In general, these students from Henan, Shandong and Liaoning havethe worst pronunciation problems and errors while those from the coastal cities suchas Shanghai, have the least. The errors are divided into two groups, one is thecommon errors or problems which all the students may have and the other is thespecial errors or problems which are different from one dialectal region to another.The most difficult English phonemes for Chinese students to pronounce are theconsonants such as/l/,/r/,/θ/,/e/,/?/,/?/,/?/at the beginning of words and/?/in the middle of word. Mispronunciation such as those can be attributed to eitherinappropriate teaching in China, or a lack of knowledge of how to pronounce theEnglish words. Several factors can influence the pronunciation of the L2learners.They are the first language interference, learner’s attitude and psychological factors,prior pronunciation instruction, and the insufficient language knowledge of English phonology and phonetics.At last, the author provides some practical suggestion for teaching and learningEnglish consonants.