A Survey Study On The Status Quo Of English Pronunciation Learning Among Junior High School Students

Along with the development of world economy, people start to emphasize the significance of pronunciation in language learning. Nowadays, many pupils in some regions have started to learn English since primary schools and even kindergartens. However, many parents hold that there are still many problems in children’s pronunciation. Many junior high school teachers believe that students have learned pronunciation since primary school. Therefore, there’s no need to learn English pronunciation. Meanwhile, many phoneticians claim that primary school is the critical period for students to learn language. However, learning language at primary school can’t achieve a good effect. There are many problems existing in primary English teaching. Therefore, English pronunciation learning at junior high school is of great importance and couldn’t be neglected.In order to fill up this gap, this paper is undertaken to investigate the status quo of English pronunciation learning in junior high school. The theoretical bases of this study are phonetics and critical period hypothesis. Its significance lies in making up for the lack of English pronunciation research especially the research on the status quo of junior high school English pronunciation learning.The research questions are listed as follows:1) What is the general situation of English pronunciation learning in junior high school?2) Are there any differences in English pronunciation learning between low achievers and high achievers? If yes, what are the differences?3) Why are there differences between low achievers and high achievers in English pronunciation learning?Quantitative and qualitative methods are undertaken in the study. The qualitative research mainly includes a questionnaire with its internal reliability reaching.812, an English pronunciation test and an oral English test. The questionnaires are given out to90Grade Three students from Yang Zhou Tang Wang Middle School on December24th,2013. Then the data is analyzed by SPSS19.0. In order to investigate students’pronunciation learning situation, the same subjects are asked to accomplish an English pronunciation test. To keep the validity of the scores, the writer requests three English teachers to participate in giving students marks. Then the valid data are processed by computer with SPSS19.0several days later. The qualitative research is the interview with ten students, five high achievers and five low achievers. The interview is carried out in Chinese and whole process is tape-recorded. Then the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed. Statistical calculation and data analysis generated the following major findings: Firstly, students haven’t got strong learning beliefs, which consist of learning attitudes, learning motivation and self-evaluation in English pronunciation. The mean scores of learning attitude and self-evaluation are lower than three, while the mean score of learning motivation is above three. As a result, most of the students haven’t got active attitudes towards English pronunciation learning and they rarely spend leisure time in practicing English pronunciation. Moreover, students’motivation to learn English pronunciation would be decreased owing to the complex words and difficult grammar. In addition, self-evaluation in segmental level is obviously higher than that of suprasegmental level. According to the oral English test, the whole situation of the participants is not bad (M=20.69). However, the mean score of English pronunciation test is69.2which show that students have little knowledge about pronunciation rules. From the general pronunciation level of junior high school students, the statistics shows that English pronunciation test are highly correlated to oral test (r=.523**).Secondly, there are some differences between low achievers and high achievers in learning beliefs. The results present that the learning beliefs of high achievers are more positive than those of low achievers.Thirdly, learning beliefs and learning methods between low achievers and high achievers are different, which are important factors with regard to English pronunciation learning.The pedagogical implications are listed as follows. Firstly, to change students’learning belief is of great importance. Secondly, learning methods are of great significance. Teachers should encourage students to take advantage of learning methods to memorize English pronunciation rules. Thirdly, teachers are required to make use of appropriate teaching method during English pronunciation teaching process.The study has two limitations. The first limitation of this study is the sample size of the study is not large enough to generalize the whole population. The other limitation is that the questions in the questionnaire are not comprehensive. And the analysis of the results is not complete and some just stay on the surface.