The Critical Period Hypothesis(关键期假说）:
If human don’t learn a foreign language before a certain age, then due to changes such as maturation of the brain, it becomes impossible to learn the foreign language like a native speaker.
The amount of exposure to English is another factor that determines if the students can acquire native-like English pronunciation.
And due to the biological and physiological differences, individual students have different phonetic ability. It is not realistic for the majority of students to have a native-like English pronunciation.
( 2 ) give additional information to that given by the words of an utterance. I GOT the job. ( it was doubtful whether I could.)
( 3 ) indicate the speaker’s attitude to the matter discussed or to the listener.
There are two different patterns of pulses:
(1) a more regular type of contraction with regular rises in air pressure ( chest pulses) (2) less frequent but stronger contractions with more sudden rises in air pressure ( stress pulses )
Some people think that failure in pronunciation is a great obstacle in language learning.
The teaching of pronunciation should focus on the students’ ability to identify and produce English sounds themselves. Phonetic rules are helpful for students to develop the ability to cope with English pronunciation and they should be introduced at a suitable stage.
Unit Six Teaching Pronunciation
I. The Role of Pronunciation
There exist two points of view:
Some people claim that students do not need to learn pronunciation because pronunciation will take care of itself as the students develop overall language ability.
II. The goal of teaching pronunciation
It is true that language students’ pronunciation should be as good as possible. The learners of English as a foreign language cannot achieve native-like pronunciation, except those who start learning English at a very young age.
Stress and intonation are as important as the sounds themselves and should be taught from the very beginning, for different intonation can create different meanings.
Meaningful practice is more desirable. Everything can be learned more effectively if it is meaningful. IV. Practising sounds
1) Focusing on a sound
When teaching pronunciation, we need to focus on individual sounds, especially those difficult to learn. The following are some common approaches to the teaching of pronunciation for the Chinese teachers:
Our realistic goals of teaching pronunciation :
Consistency: The pronunciation should be smooth and natural.
Intelligibility: The pronunciation should be understandable to the listeners.
Intonation has definite patterns which can be analyze according to their structure and functions. Intonation patterns may have:
1) It has grammatical functions, they can show that an utterance is a question and not a statement.
But I TOLD you.
Rhythm: Rhythm in speech is created by the contracting and relaxing of chest muscle ( pulses). This causes changes air pressure.
Students should pay attention to stress and intonation. Research has showed that when a native speaker mishear something, it is because the foreigner has put the stress on the wrong place, but because she/ he has mispronounced the sounds of the words.
( 1 ) the acc.
( 2 ) the speaker wants to emphasize that syllable.
Intonation: When speaking people general raise or lower the pitch of the voice, forming pitch pattern. They also give some syllables in their utterances a greater degree of loudness and change their speech rhythm. These phenomena are called intonation.
Language learning needs of practice and it is true with pronunciation. There are two kinds of practices: Practice is necessary for the development of many skills, for example, typing.
III. Aspects of Pronunciation
pronunciation
Sounds stress intonation rhythm liaison linkage phonetic Symbols
The pronunciation of a word or syllable with more force than the surrounding words or syllables. Syllables can be stressed or unstressed. A listener hears a stressed syllable or word as being louder / of longer duration / or produced with higher pitch then the surrounding word or syllables. A syllable may be stressed because:
This is true for acquiring native-like pronunciation, but there is less evidence that it is true for acquiring the grammar or the vocabulary of a foreign language. Everyone agrees that all people who learn a foreign language after puberty will always have an accent. It will be easy for the native-speaker to identify that the person is not a native-speaker of that language.