An Empirical Study On The Application Of Speech Learning Model To Word Spelling In English Pronunciation Teaching

English as an international language is widely used for daily communication,and English pronunciation has a direct impact on the effects of expression and mutualunderstanding to a great extent. So English pronunciation learning is very crucial toforeign language learners, hereby there is a growing concern about Englishpronunciation teaching in the foreign language teaching field. However, conventionalEnglish pronunciation teaching which only focused on mechanical imitation fromteachers and tapes has long neglected the significance of phonics rules. As aconsequence, students are unable to read English words without the help of teachersor tapes, let alone speak with others in English. And that is one of the reasons why“dumb English” is so common among Chinese students in most cases. What are worse,English teachers have ignored students’ perception of language and underrated thepositive transfer of learners’ first language in foreign language teaching so that theycannot reach the goals set in National English Curriculum.The present study argues that English pronunciation teaching in Chinesecontext should make good use of positive transfer of Chinese and lay stress on theteaching of phonics rules which helps greatly with words sound spelling while takingthe process of perception into consideration in order to enable students to read andwrite English words in a short term and to improve students’ phonologicalcompetence in a long term. Based on a historical review of English pronunciationteaching, it is found that there are intuitive-imitative approach and analytic-linguisticapproach, each of that is not good enough to best work in English pronunciationteaching.In view of the above, the study proposes to deploy intuitive-analytic-imitativeapproach in English pronunciation teaching by integrating analytic element with theintuitive-imitative approach. Moreover, the research attempts to establishpronunciation teaching model of English words with phonics rules by adaptingSpeech Learning Model proposed by Flege (1995) within the framework of language transfer theory. Six teaching steps will be followed in the real teaching practice underthe new teaching model which is combined with advantages of phonics rules in linewith the intuitive-analytic-imitative approach.This study adopts qualitative and quantitative approach, by which an empiricalstudy is carried out among sixty Grade3students in Hua Yuan Primary School fortwo months. There are each30subjects in experimental group (EG) and control group(CG), and all of them will be involved in pre-experiment questionnaire (EG inpost-experiment questionnaire) and pre-test and post-test before and after theexperiment. After analyzing the data by SPSS16.0collected from the experiment, aconclusion can be drawn as follows.1) It is feasible to use the newly adapted Speech Learning Model to teachEnglish pronunciation at Chinese primary schools.2) The newly adapted Speech Learning Model for English pronunciationteaching is more effective in word spelling compared with conventional teachingmodel (imitation-repetition model).3) The newly adapted Speech Learning Model for English pronunciationteaching can help students’ word spelling by virtue of phonics rules in a short term.Finally the author pinpointed pedagogical implications for pronunciationteaching, the study’s limitations and suggestions for further study.