People usually think speaking and understanding are as natural as breathing. They just take the ability of speaking for granted.
But they often forget that the ability of speaking
english embodies the correctness of pronunciation and intonation.
Actually in
china adult
english learners are facing a real challenge.
This article is about the common pronunciation difficulties of adult learner and some factors influencing
english's pronunciation. Then I will provide some practical suggestion to make learning pronunciation interesting and effective for adult
chinese learners.
Most researchers agree that the learner's mother tongue influences the pronunciation of the target language and is a significant factor in accounting for foreign accent.
For example, there are no vowels such as /æ/, /au/ and /??/ or such consonant as /?/ and /ð/.Usually
chinese students tend to substitute the sound which does not exist with similar one in their mother tongue. A typical example will be the substitution of /s/ or /z/ for the
english sound /ð/ (Fanchun Zhang – 2009): “I think” becomes “I sink”.
Another factor is that the sound exist in
chinese but nor as separate phoneme: for example /i/ exist in
chinese but whether it's long or short, it doesn't make any difference in meaning while in
english /i:/ differs from /i/ as the words “sheep” and “ship” (imagine Jack Sparrow searching for his sheep, the Black Pearl!).
The result is that
chinese learners are not aware of the difference between
english and
chinese and may not be able to hear the difference.
A number of studies have found that
english spoken by different
chinese dialect group have different problems (Laina Ho - Teaching
english to students in
china).
• It's often difficult for a Sichuan's (Central
china) students to distinguish /n/ and /l/ in words like “life” and knife”.
• In northern
china they will have problems with /r/: “curl”, “girl”, “pearl” is a real challenge for
beijing's students.
• In central
china they have problem to distinguish /æ/ and /e/ in words like “bad” and “bed” and /?/ and /n/ in “thing” and “thin”.
• In southern
china, the Cantonese speakers swallow the sound: for example, “generally” becomes “gen'rally” …
There are more than 5000 dialects and local languages in
china with different accents that will cause trouble in the
english pronunciation learning process.
In fact, students have to make the difference between
english and
chinese sounds system (Chen Fangzhi). This is the first step in the
english learning process.
Once they understand that
chinese is a tone language while
english is an intonation language, they can study the placement of tongue, lips and teeth or increase their listening and speaking skills.
To me, as Chen Fangzhi said, the best way to teach
english pronunciation is “teaching pronunciation in a meaningful and motivating way”. This is obviously what an
efl teacher tends to do:
• Providing students meaningful materials and using articles from various styles. Thus students are more active and they can learn
english both intelligibly and accurately.
• Using song, games, video and tongue twister is also very important. It can increase students' motivation to participate to the activities.
• Assessing progress is a crucial factor in maintaining student motivation. The
teacher should provide learners with information about their performance from time to time so that they may know what they have accomplished and what they still have to do.
Motivation is the key of a successful
english learning.
To conclude I will say that
chinese and
english language are so different that it's really difficult for adults learners to produce a British or an American
english.
We've discussed about the phonetics problems but there's another factor which is strongest: the
chinese culture. As Ting said in his article, “The teaching of foreign languages is but one area of liberal arts education where the remnants of Confucian dogmatism, the rigid, medieval teaching and the detachment from reality seem particularly noticeable.”
Maybe instead of trying to change
chinese english, we just have to consider it as another way of speaking
english.
By the way, the word “Chinglish” already exists (Wikipedia)”.
References:
Fanchun Zhang - A study of pronunciation problems of
english learners in
china - 2009
Laina-Ho - Teaching
english to students in
china
Chen Fangzhi - The teaching of pronunciation to
chinese students of
english
Ting Y.R – Foreign language teaching in
china: problems and perspectives – 1987
Wikipedia