Acoustic Analysis Of Errors In Acquisition Of English Vowels And Consonants By Uygur College Students

Based on large quantity of acoustic analysis,objective listening as well as comparisons with the RP speakers,the thesis focuses on the errors produced in the pronunciation by the Uyghur university students.At last the following conclusions were drawn:First,when they acquire the monophthongs,they cannot grasp the height and backness of the tongue properly,for example,when they pronounce/(?)/and/(?)/,the tongue is too low;when they pronounce/i/,the tongue moves too forward;when they pronounce/(?)/,the tongue is too backward.Also,they pronounce with a longer time length with short monophthongs.When they pronounce/au/,/i(?)/,/u(?)/,the tongue of the starting vowel moves too forward;When they pronounce/ai/,/ei/,/au/,/u(?)/,/e(?)/,the tongue of the starting vowel is too low;When they pronounce/ai/,/au/,the tongue of the ending vowel moves too backward;When they pronounce/i(?)/,/e(?)/,the tongue of the ending vowel moves too forward;When they pronounce/au/,/u(?)/,/e(?)/,/i(?)/,the tongue of the ending vowel is too low.When referred to consonants,there are also some points should not be neglected.Some of them can pronounce the voiced ones,but the overall mastery is not ideal,and there is no complementary relationship between the voiced VOT and the GAP.Some of the subjects misread the fricative/v/as a semivowel similar to its pronunciation;the places of articulation of/θ/and/(?)/are not accurate.The affricates are mispronounced;clear formats can be seen at the end of the examples,usually with a vowel/i/.They have a good command of the nasals,laterals and approximant,except for the poor command of time length of/(?)/and the neglect of roundness of/w/.In view of the above phenomena and the reasons,this paper puts forward some feasible suggestions on phonetics acquisition and teaching.English teachers should pay attention to the differences in the phonetic systems between Uygur and English,know about the negative transfer on English learning,and formulate learning strategies to help students avoid the impact of their mother tongue and dialect on English pronunciation.Students should actively learn about English phonetics and imitate the pronunciation of native speakers.In addition,with the help of speech analysis software,such as Praat,students can find their pronunciation problems more clearly and accurately and solve them effectively.