A Study On English Phonological Competence Of Chinese Middle School Learners

Researches on language proficiency scales (LPS) abroad have witnessed a history of nearly sixty years. However, most researches in China focus on introducing the methods and procedures of conducting foreign language proficiency scales or clarifying their advantages and disadvantages. Besides, most researches put their priority on the investigation and analysis of phonological competence. But few researchers have explored English phonological competence from the perspective of language proficiency scales. Since 2014, Chinese Ministry of Education has been committed to constructing the China Standards of English. Under such background comes out this thesis whose research subject is Chinese middle school students and whose research purpose is to explore how to build an English phonological competence scale for Chinese middle school students.Theoretically based on Bachman's Communicative Language Competence and Roach's English Phonological Competence,this thesis aims to deal with the following two questions: 1) What are the dimensions of the scale of English phonological competence (short for EPCS) for Chinese middle school students? 2) How many levels of the scale of EPCS ? In order to find answers to the above two questions,qualitative and quantitative methods in this thesis have been adopted and the following research procedures are enacted step by step: collecting and editing the descriptors, classifying and scaling the descriptors. Literature research is adopted in descriptor collection. During the research, 202 descriptors are collected from LPS, curriculum standards and test syllabuses, and edited by translating, rewriting, splitting, integrating and self-compiling and so on according to the five principles of positiveness,definiteness, clarity, brevity, independence before writing them in the form of "can do"statements. Finally, 132 descriptors are left after editing.Descriptor classification is based on Communicative Language Model and it takes CEFR as a reference. In the end, descriptors are classified into five dimensions. Quantitative method is taken in descriptor scaling.The preliminary scale is delivered to 10 raters to verify its rationality of categories and 30 teachers in middle schools to make a serious judgment on difficulty level of the 132 descriptors. The results have been analyzed by MFRM to set the final levels for the descriptors.Research results are as follows: 1) Dimensions mainly involved in phonological competence of middle school students include five modules:the competence to distinguish the phoneme, to reproduce the voice of the articulation, to spell the word according to the sounds, to produce the supra-segmental characteristics of stress, tone, liaison, assimilation,rhythm, intonation and pitch patterns and to achieve the phonological function in pragmatics and semantics; 2) Ranks involved in EPCS can be scaled in five levels. The results show that the collection and editing of descriptors are the foundation of constructing EPCS for Chinese middle school students. Building an EPCS for middle school students is a vital and critical step for the construction of China Standards of English,which can provide valuable guidance for English teaching, learning and assessing. It is hoped that this thesis can offer certain guidance for the teaching , learning of English phonology and the assessment of English phonological competence and give reference for the construction of China Standards of English.