A Tentative Study Of Negative Transfer Of Changzhou Dialect To English Pronunciation Aquiring

Recently, academics are paying more and more attention to English pronunciation teaching, especially on the negative transfer of Chinese dialect on English pronunciation. In China, there are large numbers of students who speak English with local accent. However, so far few researches have been carried out on the negative transfer of Changzhou dialect on English Pronunciation acquiring.To help secondary school teachers in Changzhou to improve their teaching methods, help students get rid of the difficulties in learning and acquire correct English pronunciation and raise students’interest as well as confidence in learning, we should do more researches on the negative transfer of Changzhou dialect on English Pronunciation acquiring.There are three main questions raised in the thesis:Does Changzhou dialect have any negative transfer on EFL learners’ English phonetics? If so, how does Changzhou dialect affect EFL learners’ English phonetics? How can the teachers and learners solve the problems of negative transfer in the process of English acquisition?Some grade 7 students of a junior high school in Changzhou are selected as the object of this research. The author used questionnaire survey, interview and pronunciation test as the key sources to go for the further research. With the help of the theory of contrastive analysis and error analysis, the author contrasted Standard English pronunciation and students’English pronunciation and then got the data collected and analyzed. The author found that these students’pronunciation was affected by Changzhou dialect both in segments and super segment. According to the results of the research, students, as well as teachers in Changzhou usually have trouble pronouncing [e], [(?)], [r], [θ], [(?)], [l] because of phonetic vacancy. They often have difficulty pronouncing [a:], [(?):], [(?):], [er], [ai], [(?)i], [(?)], [au], [(?)], [(?)], [(?)] and [∫] because of phonetic disagreement between English and dialect. They may add extra [(?)], [(?)] or [u] at the end of the syllabus. They may mistake [i:] and [i], [(?):] and [(?)], [a:] and [A], [u:]and [u], [(?):] and [(?)]. Moreover, they often have difficulty in stress, tone, pause and reading through. To solve these problems, the author comes up with some teaching methods, hoping that they would be of help to the teaching of the teachers and learning of the students in Changzhou.