石映红定稿

学科分类号050201

本科毕业论文

题目贵州乡村地区小学英语语音教学的

现存问题及教学策略探究

姓名石映红学号1002010540132

院(系)外国语学院

专业英语年级2011级

指导教师蒙昌配职称副教授

二○一五年五月

DECLARATION

I am,Shi Yinghong,the undersigned,hereby declare that this essay does not contain any material which has been accepted for the award of any other higher degree or graduate diploma in any tertiary institution and that,to the best of my knowledge and belief,this essay does not contain any material previously published or written by another person,except when due reference is made in the text of the essay.

Signed:

Dated:

CONTENTS

Abstract in English (1)

Abstract in Chinese (2)

I.Introduction (3)

II.Problems of Guizhou Rural Primary School English Phonetic Teaching (4)

2.1The Difficulty in Carrying out Phonetic Teaching in Primary School (5)

2.2Prevalent“Dumb English”in Primary School English Teaching (5)

2.3Pupils’Difficulty in Memorizing Words (6)

III.Methods of Improving the Teaching of English Speech in Primary School (7)

3.1Teaching the Phonetic Symbols and Letters together (7)

3.2Putting the Phonetic Teaching of the Speech,Letters and Words together (7)

3.3The Phonetic Teaching of Classifying Phonetic Symbols and Vocabulary (8)

3.4Applying Heuristic Teaching (8)

IV.Conclusion (9)

Bibliography (10)

Acknowledgments (11)

Appendix1 (12)

Appendix2 (13)

Abstract

With Zhezhuang Primary School in Hezhang County Guizhou Province as a case,the paper mainly discussed the existing problems of English phonetic teaching in rural primary schools and the teaching strategies for them,and the author came out the problems of English phonetic teaching in rural primary schools based on his communication with the teachers and students in this school, as well as his observation in the classrooms.In view of the current situation,the author puts forward some proposals to improve the English phonetic teaching in the rural primary schools.This tentative research aims to attract more attention from more experts and scholars to the English phonetic teaching in rural primary schools and stimulate more relevant researches,so as to provide more beneficial reference for English phonetic teaching in the rural primary schools.

Keywords:rural primary school;English phonetic teaching;English in the primary school;existing problems;strategies

摘要

本课题以贵州赫章哲庄小学为个案，主要探讨贵州乡村地区小学英语语音教学的现存问题及教学策略。首先通过与该校教师、学生进行访谈，深入课堂进行实地观察，从收集的数据中分析该小学英语语音教学的现存问题。在此基础上分析问题存在的原因，并且针对现存问题提出相应对策。本研究的开展旨在引起更多专家、学者对乡村小学英语语音教学的关注，以及对相关方面的问题开展更多的研究，以期为乡村小学英语语音的教学提供借鉴和参考。

关键词:乡村小学；语音教学；小学英语；现存问题；策略

I.Introduction

As we all know,in recent years,English teaching has almost spread to every school in our country,and the phonetic teaching has also attracted high attention.However,at the present,the speech sound in English teaching has not been valued enough,especially in the western rural poor areas,instead,it was almost ignored in primary schools.This paper mainly focuses on the problem and discusses some proposals for it.The research on phonetic teaching at home and abroad,which was out of question laying a foundation for the research,but the temporary research at home and abroad still exist some shortcomings.The study abroad considered that “the younger,the easier to learn a language”,and did neither mention the classroom teaching of specific speech sound,nor discuss it with different regions.Although the domestic researches mentioned the problems existing in the primary school English phonetic teaching and emphasized the importance of the primary school English teaching,the method was not concrete, for they rarely discussed the regional differences of primary school phonetic teaching.In view of this,the author tried to employ the methods of survey and interview to carry out investigation,in which he found out the main problems existing in the primary school English phonetic teaching in rural areas.Meanwhile,combining with the research results of phonetic teaching both at home and abroad,the author summarizes the methods how to carry out the pronunciation teaching in primary school effectively.

Of course,we can see pronunciation as the foundation of both listening and speaking.So you must have very good command on pronunciations before you can speak;and only when you articulate the target languages clearly and correctly,can you understand other people’s pronunciation ability.Critical period is also known as the sensitive period,which refers to the individual development process,when the environment has the greatest impact on learning Language.In the critical period,the acquisition of language is the easiest.However,if you miss it,the ability of the pronunciation acquisition will be limited.For elementary school students who learn English at first time,a solid foundation of speech is the step stone for the mastery of English in the future.However,not all English teachers value the importance of phonetic teaching,especially in rural elementary school in the western poor regions such as villages, where phonetic teaching is usually ignored.In the second academic semester of2014,the author was assigned to Zhezhuang Central Primary School of Hezhang County in Guizhou Province to do his teaching practice for three months,during which he was an English teacher of3classes in Grade four.In his spare time,he went to attend other English teachers’lessons in different classes and grades.He found some problems existing in some teachers’English pronunciation, and inadequate attention being paid to English phonetic teaching.After communicating with the

teachers there,the author arrived at a conclusion:they thought it is unnecessary to attach too much importance of phonetic teaching in elementary schools,especially in rural ones.

In addition,the author also discovered the pupils in Grade Four and other grades had very poor knowledge of English pronunciation.In view of the present situation and out of curiosity, the author decided to take Zhezhuang Primary School as a case,with an attempt to carry out some investigations on the existing problems of English phonetic teaching in the rural primary schools and the strategies for them.The author hopes the findings in his research will contribute to improve students’ability of English pronunciation in rural primary school.

II.Problems of Guizhou Rural Primary School English Phonetic Teaching In terms of the present development of the education in China,English teaching has been popularized in almost every school.However,a lot of primary schools in the western underdeveloped regions still didn’t have English class;a case in point is some rural schools in Bijie city.According to the author’s knowledge,in Zhezhuang village,Hezhang County,Bijie city,except for the central primary school,other schools almost had no English class.Even though some primary schools had English class,they took English as an auxiliary subject,having only two classes a https://www.360docs.net/doc/5711510316.html,st year,the author had the honor to come to Zhezhuang village township central primary school of Hezhang County in Province to do his teaching practice for three months.He taught English in3classes in Grade four,which provided him the opportunity to carry out a preliminary investigation on students’English pronunciation.The findings, however,was not encouraging.Meanwhile,the author also attended other English teachers’class in different classes and grades,where he found no more encouraging situation for students’English pronunciation.The problems were summarized as the follows.

To begin with,the teachers did not formulate an overall pronunciation teaching goal,nor did they have any systematic teaching plan.In the classes of middle and high grades,the teachers basically went by the books,ignoring English phonetic teaching in the junior stage,for the teachers failed to attach adequate attention to phonetic teaching.Secondly,the teachers’awareness of phonetic teaching was quite weak;they didn’t take the speech sound elements implied in the textbooks into consideration seriously.Besides,as they had very poor knowledge about English pronunciation,they didn’t often teach speech sound actively.Thirdly,although most of the teachers had strong ability of pronunciation,they did not have a good command of relevant knowledge of voice,or they were lack of the basic knowledge,which made it difficult to carry out the phonetic teaching.It was influenced on the dialectal accent accounts was another important factor,which led to the students’mispronunciation.What’s more,their self-independent learning ability was poor and the external condition of English speech sounds

were relatively weak;therefore,they would not take the initiative to find suitable extracurricular video and audio data,etc.to help them to improve their pronunciation.

2.1The Difficulty in Carrying out Phonetic Teaching in Primary School

The elementary school students are naughty and active.When you go into an English classroom to teach them English,you will find that it is not an easy work to be a primary English teacher.However,it is not only the students themselves that make it hard to teach the English speech sounds;at the same time,there are also many other factors.We can discuss some of them as the following aspects:(1)The attention to the phonetic teaching varies in different schools. Although English teaching almost reaches every primary school,phonetic teaching is still ignored in most of them.It is thought unnecessarily to teach the speech in elementary school, and it is taken for granted that having the ability to use simple English words and sentences for pupils is enough.(2)The teachers themselves have different degrees of speech sound knowledge. Students who are taught by the teachers with rich knowledge and experience of teaching can obviously learn much more knowledge of speech sounds and can improve their own pronunciation gradually.(3)The differences in individual students’interest.As a matter of fact, not every student is interested in English,much of them don’t know the importance of English for primary school students,nor do they know how important of learning English speech sounds. Because of individual differences,the ability of grasping the skills for improving speech sounds is different as well.Some students have stronger ability to acquire English speech sound,and they can also control the voice well.(4)Parents’different attitudes towards English phonetic teaching.The requirements of different families for children minders learning are different.The parents who think English very important will supervise and urge their children to study hard, while some other parents consider that English far less important than Chinese and mathematics. Especially the parents of the students in the primary school think it is enough for their children have a good command on Chinese and mathematics,as to English,they can learn it in junior high school.

2.2The Prevalent“Dumb English”in Primary School English Teaching

“Dumb English”is common in foreign languages teaching,the learners study English mainly by writing and paper-testing instead of speaking and listening,and over emphasize the examination and neglect the training of listening and speaking.As a result,“the deaf-mute phenomenon”is quite common.The problems existing in the phonetic teaching has a long history.In many areas,“Dumb English”is still a very common phenomenon in the English teaching of primary and secondary schools.Of course,there must be some reason for this.In the actual teaching process,you will find that the first obstacle to the pupils at the beginning of English learning is the pronunciation problems.During the last year when the author did the

teaching practice in Hezhang County,he found students were very poor in pronouncing English words.Teaching English word“toy”is a good demonstration,in which it would require the teacher to teach students for dozen times before they could read it.The reason is that they don’t understand it,they can’t read it out,and thus we get the so-called“Dumb English”.The pupils without accepting special introductory of speech teaching usually may get into trouble during the speech sound learning,so they will take some special measures.It is a good example that to use a Chinese characters or pinyin to replace the pronunciation of an English word.Actually,there are a certain rule between the pronunciation and spelling of English words,but for pupils who don’t know the phonetic symbols,they frequently use Chinese characters or pinyin to take the place of the pronunciation of a word,such as substituting“赖尺”for“light”,“喔奥”for“wall”,“死壮”for“strong”,etc.Thus they tend to make some mistakes in the process of spelling. What’s worse,they cannot read the sentences and dialogues accurately both with proper pronunciation and intonation.

2.3The Difficulty in Memorizing Words for Pupils

During the internship period,the author taught English in grade four,where he had students dictated English words three times respectively in each class.For each dictation,he gave them ten simple words such as“key”,“feel”,“fan”,“wall”and“toy”.However,each time about one fifth of the students didn’t hand in their dictation books.Even among the students who handed in their books,no one could spell the whole words,and very few students could correctly write more than three words.So what is the reason that makes it difficult to remember the words for primary school students?According to the author’s experience of having been learning English for over10years and the communication with other English learners,and English teachers,he comes to a general conclusion:the memorization of English words is closely associated with combining the sound,form and meaning together,in which sound(refers to the ability to read and spell the words)is the premise.As a matter of fact,most pupils can neither read nor spell. They don’t know the rules of pronunciation,and even do not understand the phonetic symbols. In addition,they not only memorize words slowly,they will also soon forget the words that they have https://www.360docs.net/doc/5711510316.html,ually,students are inclined to employ the inefficient methods to memorize words.A common method is mechanically copying a word many times.Another is combining letters with the pronunciation of English words.In the author’s class some students copied a word for dozens of times,which was a waste of time,for they got half result with twice effort, especially for the long words.Suppose the students memorized the English words in accordance with the rules of pronunciation,they would get twice the result with half the effort.

III.The Methods of Improving the Teaching of English Speech Sounds in Primary School

3.1Teaching the Phonetic Symbols and Letters together

In the process of teaching English letters,the teacher may teach students the letters’pronunciation of phonetic forms at the same time.Especially the vowel letters,such as A/ei/,E/i:/,I/ai/,O/?u/,U/ju:/,thus the students can learn the English phonetic pronunciation as they learn English letters’pronunciation.English letters contain most of the English phonetic symbols.Actually,most speech sounds had been taught after teaching letters pronunciation.Here we can classify the26English letters by speech sounds as follow:/ei/, A-H-J-K;/i:/,E-B-C-D-G-P-T-V;/e/,F-L-M-N-S-X-Z;/ju:/,U-Q-W;I,O,R was special.In the primary school,we often found that many students cannot remember the words,nor were they willing to read and memorize words.But many teachers often ascribed the problem to the students’laziness.Even they did not understand what the teacher taught.Given the fact that some students had their anguish,how could we force them to read,or to memorize new words? That the students cannot remember the word can be attributed to their lack of necessary knowledge of speech sounds.The author had such a kind of experience.As we all know,English words are different from Chinese characters.The shape of English words has a direct connection with its pronunciation,so we can remember a lot of words according to the pronunciation.For another thing,if one cannot read the word,it will be difficult for him/her to remember it as well. If the students can learn English speech sounds,they will be able to find out the corresponding pronunciation by letter combinations,and they can easily spell words and read the text fluently and accurately.Therefore,we must value the teaching of phonetic knowledge to make it to be a tool for students to memorize English words.

3.2Putting the Phonetic Teaching of the Speech,Letters and Words together

This method was based on“Teaching the phonetic symbols and letters together”.To be specific,the teacher put those words of the same pronunciation by letter,or in accordance with the basic rules of English pronunciation,spelling simpler words to teach together at the same time.It aimed at making the students learn some basic words while learning letters’pronunciation and the phonetic pronunciation.Such as the letter“A”/ei/,name,cake,date;the letter“I”/ai/,five,time,kite.Meanwhile,the improvement of listening and speaking skills benefited from speech sounds.If students failed to develop a good sense of speech sound,it would be difficult to improve their spoken English and listening ability.This is because only when the students learn speech sounds well,can they understand phonetic materials well and can they speak English confidently.Thus,they did not only enhance the confidence of learning

English,but improved their enthusiasm to learn English.So we could say that to learn English speech sounds were the premise to improve one’s listening and speaking ability.

3.3The Phonetic Teaching of Classifying Phonetic Symbols and Vocabulary

Teachers should teach the words in accordance with the same pronunciation rules. Classification can be repeated many times,usually will be a word in vowels,consonants,syllable stress,unstressed syllable multiple classification.The classification aims to help students to master the phonetic symbols and pronunciation to remember these words.As/ei/:cake,face, name,make,hate;/ai/:I,like,kite,five,rice,nine.Certainly,speech sound is a factor that cannot be ignored in the primary school English teaching.However,in actual teaching practice, many English teachers want to teach the speech sounds but they can’t find a good teaching method.And it is also necessary to do a lot of boring practice for primary school English phonetic teaching;so if the teachers do not deal with it properly,it may discourage students’study enthusiasm.So we need to pay more attention to the proper methods and techniques in the phonetic teaching.The following methods are proposed by the author in the hope of providing some references to improve English phonetic teaching in the rural primary schools.

3.4Applying Heuristic Teaching

The heuristic teaching means that the educators do the education of the inspiration,the initiative to obtain knowledge,develop intelligence,cultivate personality,forming the process of the perfect personality.It is a kind of teaching method which can make the students to study positively and develop both physically and mentally.In an English class,teachers ought to inspire the students to find out the connection between sound and sound,letter and letter,word and word,even between the two languages;and do more practice to deepen the understanding and consolidate students’memorization.Here the author would like to illustrate this point with the search of the pronunciation rules about the letter“I”.We can divide the whole class into two groups and ask them go to look for the laws of the two patterns of the pronunciation rules about the letter“I”,while the first group work on the English words“six,his,big,pig,fish,swim,this, etc”.While the other group“ice,five,kite,bike,rice,nine and the like,and so on”.Within the time given,the teacher can judge which group find out more relevant words and sum up the laws and give them some rewards.Finally the teacher provides a summary to let students know what the two main pronunciations of the letter“I”in different words.

In the process of the authors’teaching practice,he applied some of the methods above in two classes,where he found that the students’pronunciation had improved quite a lot comparing to their performance three months ago,but the other class made little progress.Therefore,the author hope that all the rural primary school English teachers to use more vivid and interesting teaching methods,so as to improve the level of elementary students’phonetic ability,and to

narrow the gap with the students from other regions.

IV.Conclusion

This paper mainly discussed the existing problems of English phonetic teaching in rural primary schools and the teaching strategies for them.And the author worked out the problems on the basis of communication with the teachers and students in this school,as well as his observation in the classrooms.In view of this,the author tried to employ the methods of survey and interview to carry out investigation,in which he found out the main problems existing in the primary school English phonetic teaching in rural areas.Firstly,it is still difficult to carry out phonetic teaching in the primary School.Besides,the“Dumb English”is prevalent in the primary school.What’s more,memorizing words is a hard job for the pupils.Meanwhile, combining with the research results of phonetic teaching both at home and abroad,the author summarizes the methods how to carry out the pronunciation teaching in primary school effectively.The main methods are to apply the heuristic teaching,to teach the phonetic symbols and letters together,to put the phonetic teaching of the speech,letters and words together and to classify phonetic symbols and vocabulary in the phonetic teaching.In addition,the paper aims to attract certain attention from more experts,scholars to the rural primary school English phonetic teaching,which will encourage them to carry out more researches on the related problems,and provide the reference for the rural primary school English phonetic teaching,thus to a certain extent,improving the rural primary school students English ability.

However,because of the author’s personal shortages in both knowledge and ability,this paper still had the following deficiencies.To begin with,the author only carried out the investigation on the small part of the primary schools in the township Hezhang County,the data perhaps was not so representative enough.Secondly,the author had not collected enough literature for the https://www.360docs.net/doc/5711510316.html,st,since this was a tentative research,the arrangement of the investigation and interview was not so perfect,and the analysis of the investigation was not so thorough.Therefore,whether the research conclusion was adaptable for all of the English phonetic teaching in the rural middle schools or not still needed more specific cases to verify.

In the future,the author will constantly improve the knowledge structure and the ability of research,and continue to concentrate on finding out the problems of English phonetic teaching in rural primary school and searching the teaching strategies.What’s more,in the future research the author will try to do the surveys among more areas and more schools,so as to work out more findings.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this essay would not have been possible without the encouragement,the guidance,and the support of many other people.First of all,I would extend my sincere and heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Lecturer,Meng Changpei,who has given me valuable suggestions and insightful comments in the essay writing.At the beginning,I once wanted to give up my essay for many times,it was Mr.Meng who gave me the confidence to face the essay writing.He has also spent much time going through brainstorming with me,put my work on the right track,read in great details every draft of every section of this essay,and helped improve the appropriateness of English used.Besides,the thanks still need to give to my classmates in our group;they helped me a lot as well.

What’s more,the headmaster of department,Luo Yong,who also has gave me a much convenience.Without her encouragement,I would have given my essay.

Finally,the special thanks is needed to give to my family for their unfailing support and love throughout my university life.

附录一

小学生英语语音教学现状访谈

1,时间:2014年10月

2,地点:赫章县哲庄乡中心小学教师宿舍

3,对象:赫章县哲庄乡中心小学部分英语教师

4,目的:了解小学生英语语音教学现状，教师运用的教学方法。5,内容:访谈主要涉及以下几方面的内容:

(1)教师对小学生的英语语音教学的重视程度

(2)所教班级学生的英语语音水平

(3)日常采用何种授课方式

根据内容设置的主要问题如下:

(1)您认为英语语音对学生英语学习有多重要?

(2)您认为小学英语语音教学主要包含哪几个方面?

(3)您认为对于小学生来说什么样算是好的语音?

(4)在小学英语教学阶段是否进行音标教学或者是拼读规律教学?

(5)您教的学生英语语音发音状况怎么样?

(6)在教学过程中是否使用了某些英语语音教学策略?

(7)您能否总结出几条较好的英语语音教学策略?

附录二

个别教师的访谈记录

访谈1(T教师，W作者)

W:X老师，您好!请问您教几个班?

T:四个班，三年级两个班，六年级两个班。

W:您教英语多少年了?

T:三年了，之前教的是语文，后来缺英语教师学校就让我教英语。

W:那么您教英语的这些年对于英语教学有什么感想吗?

T:前两年英语被当作主要科目，后来就被当作副科了，一周只有两节课。W:请问您认为英语语音对学生英语学习有多重要?

T:我认为很重要，但是在小学并不那么重要。

W:您为什么认为在小学并不是很重要?

T:一方面，小学生对学习语音不感兴趣；另外一方面，初中有更系统的语音教学。

W:在你的教学过程中有涉及语音教学吗？

T:有。

W:您认为小学英语语音教学主要包含哪些方面?

T:我认为语音教学包括字母的读音,单词的发音，字母组合的发音和一些发音规律，清辅音,浊辅音发音规律，发音部位以及节奏。

W:您认为对于小学生来说什么样算是好的语音?

T:在日常生活中自然渗透到学生脑海中的,听起来很舒服的，应该算是好的语音。

W:在小学英语教学阶段是否进行音标教学或者是拼读单词教学?

T:是，三年级就开始讲授了。

W:您教的学生英语语音发音状况怎么样?

T:好的较少。少部分学生一教就会，但是多数学生要重复好几遍才能勉强掌握。所以针对大多数学生的情况，要尽量多重复几遍才可以。

W:语音不好的学生比例占有多少?什么原因呢?

T:占80%吧，大多是因为他们的基础不好，在低年级没学好，现在也来不及给他们补。还有就是受方言限制有的音发不准，语调也不好听。

W:您能否总结出几条较好的英语语音教学策略?

T:常用的也就是听说练习，因为任务比较重，课文又多所以更多的还是写。W:您组织过英语语音练习活动吗?比如表演什么的。

T:没有，没时间，上课除了讲课文，还要做练习题。

W:在英语语音教学的过程中，您觉得遇到的最大的困难是什么?

T:最大的困难的就是有些学生总也听不懂一些语言资料，反复听也达不到理想的效果，还有就是学生口语不是那么纯正，总是带有汉语的色彩，语音语调不够地道。再有就是教的班级多，顾不过来，有时想运用些什么策略，也是力不从心。以后，会注意一点，争取也搞一两次。

W:感谢您抽出时间接受我的访谈。谢谢您!祝您工作愉快!

T:不客气!跟你聊的很开心，谢谢你！再见！

W:再见！