A Study On The Application Of English Chants To English Phonetics Teaching In Junior High Schools

This thesis mainly discusses about the effects of applying English chants to English phonetics teaching in junior high schools.It is well known that language is an important tool for human beings to communicate with others.Phonetics plays a vital role in oral interaction.However,in many junior high schools,most teachers have emphasized more on English vocabulary,grammar,reading and writing teaching,but ignore the part of English phonetics teaching.For this reason,how to improve English phonetics teaching effectively becomes a question so that many English teachers try to find out the solution.Recent years,researchers did comprehensive researches on English phonetics teaching,and some scholars came up with various teaching strategies,including phonics,games teaching method and formative assessment,etc.Pei and Ding(2013)put forward the idea that musical ability has effects on students5 English phonetic competence.Based on the research foundation and features of English chants' distinct rhythm and full of interest,English chants teaching can combine musical intelligence and linguistic intelligence together on account of human beings' musical potential.These two intelligence can promote each other mutually,which makes phonetics learning filled with delights.Therefore,English chants are the appropriate material for cultivating students' pronunciation,language and rhythm sensation.On the basis of the input hypothesis,the affective filter hypothesis and multiple intelligence theory,the study tries to explore the following two questions:1.What effects do English chants have on junior high school students' English phonetics learning interest?2.What effects do English chants have on junior high school students' English phonetic competence?The research subjects are 90 Grade Seven students of two classes from a junior high school in Changsha.One class is as the experimental class and the other is as the control class according to their English scores of entrance examination from primary school to junior high school,and the experiment sustains thirteen weeks.The study adopts the following research instruments,questionnaire survey,pre-test and post-test as well as classroom observation.There are ten multiple choices in the questionnaire to learn about students' phonetics learning interest and situation;and the test paper has written test part and oral test part,which can examine students' phonetic competence in a more comprehensive way.The author analyzes the collected data by SPSS 21.0.The research results suggest that(1)The application of English chants to English phonetics teaching makes students' learning interest improved greatly.According to the results of the experimental data,students have a positive improvement in English phonetics learning interest.(2)Students' phonetic competence has been improved greatly due to the application of English chants,including word pronunciation,sentence stress,intonation,pause and liaison.Therefore,the author makes a conclusion that English chants are effective to stimulate students'phonetics learning interest and improve their phonetic competence.It deserves to be adopted in English phonetics teaching.The study has certain limitation because the experiment period is short and the study subject is only 90 students,which makes the sample size rather small.Further study will be improved from these two aspects.