Negative Transfer Of Jianghuai Dialect On English Phonetic Acquisition

Phonetic acquisition plays an important role in second language acquisition (SLA), which is the core of language. In SLA, a learner’s knowledge of the first language may get in the way of mastering a second language to some extent. The research is based on Language Transfer Theory and Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. The participants are 48 non-English major students of the first year who come from Hongchao section of Jianghuai dialect (JHD) in Fuyang Teachers College and Hefei University of Technology. Excel and SPSS are adopted. Through empirical research, the thesis has discussed how the learners in Hongchao section of Jianghuai dialect are affected by their native language in English phonetic acquisition.The research is divided into two stages. At the first stage, Test 1 (production test) is carried out. It aims to find out on what level the errors are more, consonant level or vowel level? The results show that there does exist negative transfer of JHD on the learners’ English pronunciation, and there are more errors on consonant level, especially on the confusion of/n/&/1//s/&/θ//z/&/(?)/and/n/&/η/. The confusion is caused by the negative transfer of JHD through a contrastive analysis between the sound system of JHD and RP.At the second stage. Test 2 (perception test) and Test 3 (production test) are adopted. They are designed to answer two questions:(1) Does the confusion also exist in perception? If it does, what are specific phonetic confusion contexts in the course of perception and production? (2) Is there any relationship between the perception and production? The results indicate that:(1) confusion exist in both perception and production process and specific phonetic confusion contexts are almost the same in the two processes; (2) in minimal pairs, the confusion is the most obvious; (3) the perception and production of these sounds (except/s/) are in a positive correlation. (4) the reason of negative transfer is that the learners don’t build correct conceptual models for each of the confusable consonants.At the end of the research, some suggestions are given to teachers and learners in this region on how to avoid negative transfer of JHD on English phonetic acquisition.