A Study On Senior High School Students’ English Liaison Problem

Compared with other suprasegmental features,focus on researching liaison remains insufficient.As liaison is a significant element that influences English fluency and is worth studying,this research will focus on the liaison problems in Senior High School students’ English speech.The research designed a set of reading materials which contained 14 sentences,covering almost all kinds of consonant plus vowel linking,such as “plosive plus vowel”,“fricative plus vowel”,“affricate plus vowel”,“nasal plus vowel”,“/l/ plus vowel” and “/r/ plus vowel”,and from the investigation into these materials students’ reading acts were collected.Since there could be differences between students’ reading language and their natural language,the investigator also collected students’ natural language from open online classes to render it possible to analyze the liaison problems in two types of speeches.To obtain students’ attitudes towards liaison,a questionnaire was designed from textbook,teacher and student respectively.The result shows that the accuracy of “consonant + schwa” is generally higher than normal linking in reading language,while the accuracies of both kinds of liaisons are low in natural language.Whether in students’ natural language or reading language,students’ performances on “fricative linking”,“nasal linking”,“/l/ + vowel linking”,and “r linking” are unsatisfactory.Besides,the accuracies of “plosive linking”and “affricate linking” need further test because of schwa.As for students’ attitudes towards liaison,most of the subjects hold it is important unless compared with phoneme,word stress,sentence stress or intonation.Emphasis on liaison needs to be improved no matter in the textbook or for teachers.The ignorance,to some degree,explains students’ poor performance on liaison.Therefore,suggestions are provided from English curriculum,teachers and learners themselves.