The Impacts of Learners’ Chinese Accents on Their English Pronunciation

     朱晓莺

（宁夏民族职业技术学院, 宁夏  吴忠  751100）

摘  要：This paper embarks on both positive and negative impacts the learners’ Chinese accents have on their English pronunciation and studies the example cases of students’ problematic pronunciation, aiming to find out practical and relevant solutions.

关键词：impacts；Chinese accents；pronunciation

中图分类号：G633    文献标识码：A        文章编号：

English language is an important tool of communication in social life nowadays, and its sound system or pronunciation we usually say, plays a really vital role in this process. Therefore, we teachers in English class pay much attention to help students grasp English sounds and improve their pronunciation skills. Having experienced teaching for these years, I’ve found that learners’ accents, namely local patterns and intonations, have great impacts on their English pronunciation.

There are some similar features between part of English Phonetic Alphabet and Chinese Pinyin. For example, English sounds such as /p/、/b/、/t/、/d/、/k/、/g/ can be found in Chinese Pinyin as p、b、t、d、k、g，which makes them easier for the learners to master. But it’s also unavoidable that students will come across some sounds that may be new and difficult for them, such as dentals. At that time they will try to find out some similar sounds in their mother tongue to replace, thus problematic pronunciation will occur.

Ⅰ. Example cases of students’ problematic pronunciation

  1.Dentals: /T/ & /D/

There are no dentals in Chinese sound system, which may cause great difficulty for the students to create such English sounds as /T/and /D/,  thus it’s a common phenomenon for the teachers to find out their students pronounce /T/ as /s/ or /t/, and /D/ as /z/.

 2.Diphthongs: /ai/ &/au/

 Some diphthong sounds in English pronunciation such as /ai/ and /au/ are found tough for the students, and the chief reason is that they don’t have same correspondence sounds in Chinese. When it comes to my own experience with my students, they have a habit of pronouncing these two sounds as /Q/ and /O:/ respectively.

 3. Nasals: /n/& /N/

When the velum is lowered, the airstream is allowed to flow out through the nose, sounds produced in this way are nasals, and they are /m/, /n/ and /N/ namely. Most of my students have no problems when pronouncing /m/, as it’s easy for them to follow the same principle of the sound “m” in Chinese Pinyin. The problematic sounds usually occur when they pronounce /n/ and /N/.

  4. /n/& /l/

  Quite an amount of my students come from southern part of Ningxia, and they are not able to distinguish differences of Chinese sounds nainai(奶奶) and lailai(莱莱)，nani(那你)and lali(辣李),etc. The same is true of their English pronunciation, and it takes great time and efforts for the teachers to help and guide them.

5. /v/&/w/

/v/, a fricative, is produced by blocking the airstream, having the air push through the narrow opening of the upper teeth and the lower lip. As there is no correspondence sound in Chinese, the students may find a similar sound /w/ to replace, and that’s why they pronounce the word vest the same as west, to name but a few.

Ⅱ. Solutions

1.Explanations of articulate English sounds

  To solve the learners’ problematic pronunciation, the explanations of articulate English sounds should be given priority, for the correct pronunciation is very much dependent on knowing how to pronounce or make the sounds. English teachers are required to explain clearly to the students about the place of articulation, the manner of articulation, the related organs and the relevant rules.

2.emorization of patterns

Once the students get the explanations of articulate English sounds from their teachers, they should manage to memorize the patterns in mind. Only by doing so, can they create correct sounds via their vocal organs.

3.itation drills

Imitation has been found to be an essential and effective method to improve the students’ pronunciation skills. It can be divided into four steps when drilling the students in class practice, which are individual sound, words, word pairs and sentences.

4.nimal pairs

Minimal pairs are pairs of words that look the same but have one phonemic change between them. For example: let - lit, but - boot, sit - set, caught - cut, sing - song, etc. Using these pairs in English class can help students recognize the minor differences in pronunciation between one word and another and distinguish them.             Ⅲ.Conclusion

  The impacts of students’ local accents on their English pronunciation can be both positive and negative. To some extent, it has more negative interferes. As English teachers, we should try to find out the relationship between the students’ problematic pronunciation and their Chinese accents, and figure out the solutions to remove the barrier.

参考文献：

[1]George Yule.The Study of Language (second edition) [M].Beijing, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.