Effects Of Vocational Students' Positive Transfer Of The Chinese Pinyin Pronunciation And Spelling Rules In The Acquisition Of English Phonetics

Language transfer has been a central issue in applied linguistics,second language acquisition(SLA)and language teaching for more than one century.From the 1950s to the 1970s,the difference among languages has been one of the hotly debated topics in the study of SLA.However,during this time the role of mother tongue(MT)in SLA was deemed as an interference,and thus,the process of SLA was considered as overcoming the negative transfer of MT.Moreover,English,as the target language(TL)of Chinese,share little cognate with our native language(NL)Chinese,which attracted more attention on the difference.Until the 1970s,researchers began to understand this issue in a more comprehensive and in-depth perspective.In recent years,more and more domestic scholars confirmed the positive transfer of Chinese in English learning and found many similarities between Chinese and English,such as syntax,vocabulary,phonetics,and even thinking pattern.Although a number of studies have been carried out on the positive transfer,most of them concerned with the possibilities of transfer in theoretical level but rarely covered the practical application into English teaching and learning and the empirical studies on vocational students in the aspect of English phonetics are extremely rare.The purpose of the thesis is to find the answers to the following research questions through the experiment:·Can Chinese pinyin system play a positive role in English phonetics learning of vocational students?·Can the positive transfer of Chinese pinyin system facilitate English phonetics learning and word spelling of vocational students?·What pedagogical methods can be adopted to improve the positive transfer of Chinese in English teaching and learning?The experiment lasted for 12 weeks,from March to June in 2016.60 non-English major students from Ningxia Finance Economics Professional Technology were chosen asthe participants.In the experimental group,a new method of phonetic teaching was supplied by using Chinese pinyin system,while the traditional teaching method(listen and repeat)was applied in the control group.The investigation adopted tests to examine which group had made greater progress after the experiment.Then questionnaire and interview were carried out to explore students' attitudes towards the positive role of Chinese pinyin system in English phonetics learning.The collected data were processed by the SPSS(19.0)and the recording materials were analyzed by Praat.Through the detailed research and discussion on the collected data,the author finds that 1)Chinese pinyin system plays a positive role in English phonetics learning,which helps the vocational students acquire English phonetics more easily and effectively.2)Chinese pinyin system is conducive to the promotion of English word spelling ability of vocational students.3)Chinese pinyin system improved students' learning motivation in English phonetics.Therefore,the findings revealed by the present study indicate that Chinese pinyin system should be made good use of rather than be abandoned during English phonetics learning.The results of the research contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the positive role played by Chinese in English learning and arouse more attention to be paid to English phonetics learning and teaching of vocational students.Practical suggestions for pedagogy and future research are also identified.