Negative Transfer Of Fangshan Dialect On The Acquisition Of English Pronunciation

Language is constituted of three essential elements,phonetics,vocabulary and grammar,among which phonetics is the realization of the other two,so it is critical for students to acquire standard pronunciation when they are learning a foreign language.Fangshan dialect,as a branch of Lüliang dialect,has its own unique features.Besides,due to the shortage of teaching resources,students in Fangshan are easy to be influenced by dialect speaking habit when learning English.This thesis aims to investigate the influence of Fangshan dialectal accent on the acquisition of English pronunciation,analyze the causes of such influences and put forward corresponding suggestions for English learning in Fangshan.Based on the language transfer theory and contrastive analysis hypothesis,the thesis adopts questionnaire and pronunciation test as the research instruments and 60 Senior One students of Fangshan County High School as the subjects to investigate three research questions:(1)How do finals of Fangshan dialect influence the local students' acquisition of English vowels?(2)How do initials of Fangshan dialect influence the local students' acquisition of English consonants?(3)What are the causes of the influences of Fangshan dialect on the acquisition of English pronunciation? According to the comparisons among three involved sound systems,the author selects out 6 target vowels and 9 target consonants for the subjects to do the pronunciation test.The recording materials are transcribed and analyzed and the results of the questionnaire are combined to draw the following conclusions:(1)The pronunciation of English vowels /i/,/?:/,/?:/,/?/,/ai/ are negatively influenced by finals of Fangshan dialect in varying degrees and the habits of dialect-speaking has no negative impact on the pronunciation of English vowel /?u/ by local students.(2)The pronunciation of English consonants /?/,/?/,/t?/,/d_?/,/n/,/v/,/e/ and /f/ are negatively influenced by initials of Fangshan dialect in varying degrees and the negative transfer of consonant /?/ caused by habits of Fangshan dialect-speaking is not obvious,which are similar to those made by other Chinese English learners.(3)The thesis analyzes the causes of the results in questionnaire investigation from four aspects: students' habits of dialect-speaking,the situation of English pronunciation learning in Fangshan,the teaching of English pronunciation in Fangshan,and local students' recognition and attitude toward English pronunciation learning.Finally,correspondingsuggestions are provided for the learning and teaching of English pronunciation in Fangshan according to problems and shortcomings involved in these four aspects.This study implies that both teachers and students should lay more stress on English pronunciation.Teachers play a vital role in the process of English phonetic learning.At the beginning of English pronunciation learning,it is necessary for teachers to give systematical knowledge about English phonetics to students,make comparisons of the speech sound systems among Putonghua,dialect and English from the manners of articulation and the places of articulation,focus on the easily transferred phonemes,and correct students' pronunciation errors in time.English learners should not only learn the English pronunciation in class but also practice and imitate the authentic English pronunciation with the aid of other audio devices after class.