An Empirical Study Of The Acquisition Of English Suprasegmental Features By Chinese College Students

English suprasegmental features cover stress,rhythm and intonation,which are the important forms to express information and the important ways to express speakers' attitudes or moods.English suprasegmental features constitute significant features of English phonetics.In the process of language communication,speakers speak English not in separate vowels and consonants,but in connected speech flow,so we can find that speakers rely on suprasegmental features more than segmental features to convey their ideas and attitudes.Segmental and suprasegmental features of English differ from those of Chinese,the differences between suprasegmental features of English and Chinese are more notable since the effect of the negative transfer of Chinese on students' acquisition of English suprasegmental features is more serious.Therefore it's more difficult to master the suprasegmental features in English.At present,scholars from home and abroad pursuing phonetic studies mainly focus on the process of phonetic acquisition and the hindering or promoting factors,so there is rather limited research on English suprasegmental features.Based on the theories of language transfer and error analysis,this study mainly explores how Chinese college students at different levels of phonetic proficiency acquire suprasegmental features in English,and to what extent their phonetic proficiency influences the acquisition of suprasegmental features in English.The two questions addressed in this study are as follows:1)To what extent do Chinese college students acquire English suprasegmental features?2)What are the effects of Chinese college students' phonetic proficiency on their acquisition of English suprasegmental features?In this study,the selected objects are third-year students of English majors from a university.We randomly selected 60 students to have tests on phonetics.Then,we divided them into two groups at different levels according to their phonetic recording grading,and studied their acquisition of suprasegmental features respectively.From this research,we found that,in word stress,Chinese college students can accurately judge the stress placement of monosyllabic words and most of disyllabic words,but they can't correctly judge that of homographs,so there is a significant difference in acquisition of word stress between the two groups.In sentence stress,most of the subjects failed to adopt sentence stress to convey different shades of meanings,so there is no obvious difference in acquisition between the two groups.In rhythm,neither group is not so good at weak form and liaison;the higher phonetic proficiency group acquired them better than the lower proficiency group.In intonation,they couldn't accurately use intonation to express different attitudes or moods due to overuse of the falling tone,and the two groups differ much in acquisition.The major findings of this study are as follows:On the one hand,Chinese college students have had preliminary acquisition of suprasegmental features in English.On the other hand,those at a higher level of phonetic proficiency acquired slightly better than those at a lower level.Though this study is a preliminary attempt at the acquisition of English suprasegmental features by Chinese college students,it has both theoretical and pedagogical implications.Theoretically,the study has enriched the phonetics research,and it may also shed light on second language acquisition research.Pedagogically,the study focused on Chinese students at different levels of phonetic proficiency,and addressed how they acquired English suprasegmental features,which may shed light on English phonetic teaching and learning.