What should be taught to the beginners, pronunciation or phonetic?

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 429.

The role of pronunciation

I. The importance of teaching pronunciation

Teaching Pronunciation

Unit5

Correct pronunciation is needed for a speaker to communicate. If our pronunciation is incorrect, we will not be understood. The result will be that Chinese people will think you are speaking in a foreign language and English people will think you are speaking Chinese.

It is more important for us language teachers to have a good pronunciation. If we have not a good pronunciation, who can we enable our students to pronounce correctly?

e.g. I need some medicine for my cough.(cough[kof],caw[kau])

He is not a boy who is afraid of hardship and death. (with or without a pause before "who" is quite different.)

As a means of communication by word of mouth, language is used in oral speech and in reading aloud. Therefore, in order to make oneself easily understood while expressing one's own or other people's thoughts in any language, one must be able to pronounce words and sentences in that language quite correctly.

Task 1:

Pronunciation is more important than phonetic. Stress and intonation are as important as the sounds themselves and should be taught from the very beginning.

Whether pronunciation needs special attention or focus in language teaching depends on many factors especially learner factors.

Learners whose native language has similar sounds to English are less likely to have problems with pronunciation

Learners who have more exposure to English need less focus on pronunciation

Adult learners need more focus on pronunciation because they are more likely to substitute English sounds with sounds from their native language.

Beginning Chinese learners of English should focus on pronunciation and their ability to identify and produce English sounds themselves, because phonetic transcripts are more abstract and less meaningful.