Error Analysis Of Middle School English Teachers’ Pronunciation

Error analysis theory as an important part of applied linguistics has made a greatcontribution to second language acquisition and foreign language teaching. It not only helpsteachers to learn the students’ learning characteristics and difficulties, but also sheds somelight on learners*leanring process. Most domestic researches about English pronunciationerrors are aimed at students. However, few researchers focus on teachers" pronunciation errors.Teachers greatly influence their s*tudents English pronunciation because English teachers arethe main instructors when Chinese students learn English.In this study, with Error Analysis as the guidance, the author has selected14Englishteachers from four middle schools through the approach of stratified random sampling. Eachteacher’s teaching class has been videoed and transcribed into texts. After watching thesevideos, it has been found that phonetic errors exist in each ’teachers spoken English, so theauthor tagged, counted and classiifed them. The phonetic errors have been classified into six-ytpes: substitution errors, adding errors, deletion errors, stress errors, liaison errors andintonation errors. The results of the present study are as follows:(1) Among the four types of phonetic errors, substitution errors are the most distinctiveerrors, taking up76.8%of the total number. The second place is adding errors, accounting for11.6%. Deletion errors are the third type of common errors, which take up5.6%of the totalerrors. The next are stress errors, and the percentage is3.1%. The iffth place of commonerrors are liaison errors, taking up2.4%. The least are intonation errors only occupying0.5% in total. Every type of phonetic errors has some subcategories, and some examples areprovided in the study.(2) After running the t-Test of SPSS program, the results show that, in the aspects of thetotal phonetic errors, substitution errors, adding errors and stress errors except for deletionerrors, liaison errors and intonation errors, the teachers from the city group middle schoolssignificantly distinguish those from the rural group middle schools.(3) Through Pearson Correlation analysis, there is no evidence to say that teachers’phonetic errors are related to their tenure.Finally, based on the study, the author presents some implications for English educationespecially in pronunciation teaching. The author indicates some limitations of the researchand wishes a further exploration.