An Empirical Study On Ma Cheng’s Three-in-one Phonetic Teaching Method In English Teaching At Primary School

As one of the three elements of English language (pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar), pronunciation is essential in English learning. What’s more important is that it is a guarantee for students’sustainable development of language learning. For English beginners, the first access to English learning is pronunciation, and thus pronunciation teaching is usually regarded as the first step in English teaching.Ma Cheng, the associate researcher and director of Beijing Modern Teaching Research Institute, proposed "Letters, Phonemes, Phonetic Symbols Three-in-one"(Three-in-one for short in the following paragraphs)phonetic teaching method. The method focuses on the situation of Chinese students’English learning and infiltrates phonetic teaching step by step from English letters to phonetic symbols. Although some positive effects of this method has obtained, more scientific research is also needed to prove it works better than the traditional method and can be widely used in English teaching.This study is an attempt to test the effectiveness of the Three-in-one method compared with the traditional way of phonetic teaching. The experiment includes four research questions:1. Compared with the traditional phonetic teaching method, whether the Three-in-one method is more effective in developing students’ability to read words or sentences correctly?2. Compared with the traditional phonetic teaching method, whether the Three-in-one method is more effective in developing students’ability to recognize words or sentences while listening to them?3. Compared with the traditional phonetic teaching method, whether the Three-in-one method tends to develop students’ability to memorize words? 4. What kinds of views do students in experimental class hold on the Three-in-one method?The subjects were60students in Grade3from two different classes of Da Tong Early Education School in Da Tong, Shan Xi Province. The experimental group was randomly selected as Class I with28students and Class II was the control group with32members. Students’English classes lasted15weeks and were interspersed with phonetic teaching; students got two English classes for40minutes each week. The experimental group was taught by using the Three-in-one method while the control group was taught with the traditional phonetic teaching method. The two classes were both taught by the researcher. Students in both classes attended a final-term English proficiency examination after the experiment. The SPSS17.0was used to analyze the data of the test, through which the researcher wanted to prove the advantages of the Three-in-one method compared with the traditional way of phonetic teaching method. Then the results indicated that both phonetic teaching methods could improve students’phonetic competence but the effect of the Three-in-one method was better than the traditional phonetic teaching method. Besides, the researcher conducted a survey to students in experimental classes which aimed to investigate students’views on the new phonetic teaching method. The responses from the questionnaire indicated that, a vast majority of students in experimental class enjoyed this new phonetic teaching method and they has developed the abilities to recognize words or sentences while listening to them and pronounce words or read sentences correctly. At the same time, most students in experimental class learned to memorize English words by virtue of the phonetic rules and they gained confidence in English pronunciation. What’s more, most of the students in experimental class thought learning pronunciation could promote their English learning.This research helps to complement and perfect some relative theories on English phonetic teaching. It also contributes practical and heuristic significance to English phonetic teaching reform and development.