Part A. The CommentaryA部分评论
作为专业咨询组合的一部分，评论指的是迷你会议的反映。小型会议于6月19日举行，它为我们提供了一个平台，我们可以展示我们的研究进展和剩余的工作，然后从我们的同行和导师那里获得反馈。我的海报由四部分组成。
As a part of Professional Enquiry Portfolio, the commentary refers to the reflection of the mini conference. The mini conference held on 19th of June, and it provided us with a platform where we can show our progress of research as well as remaining work and then obtain feedback from our peers and tutors. My poster was made up of four parts.
第一部分简要介绍了我研究的主要问题;第二部分展示了教学环境的特点;第三部分列出了几个研究问题，第四部分阐明了剩余工作的清单。
Part one briefly introduced the main issue of my research; part two demonstrated the features of teaching context; part three listed several research questions, and part four clarified a list of remaining work.
当我第一次听到迷你会议的概念时，我在考虑它对我有多大帮助。事实是，它真的帮助了我很多。无论他们是谁，导师还是同龄人，他们不仅给了我建设性的建议，还给了我鼓励。
When I first heard the concept of mini conference, I was thinking about how much it would help me. The fact is that it really helps me a lot. No matter whom they are, the tutors or the peers, they all gave me not only constructive suggestions, but also encouragement.
首先，我想从我的专业调查的标题开始。我在海报上的标题是“在中国中学教授发音的最佳方式是什么？”我记得我的一个名叫Yatsmen的同学是第一个看到我的海报的人，她给我的唯一建议是缩小标题下来将帮助我使主题更清晰。实际上，我对我的头衔也不满意。让我最困扰的是，如果我只写一个发音方面而不是发音教学，我担心我会难以达到字数方面的目标。Firstof all, I would like to start from the title of my professional enquiry. My title showed on the poster is “What is the best way to teach pronunciation in Chinese middle school?” I remembered that one of my classmates named Yatsmen was the first person to see my poster, and the only suggestion she gave me was that narrowing the title down would help me to make the theme more clear. Actually, I was not satisfied with my title either. What troubled me most was that I was afraid that it would be difficult for me to achieve the goal in terms of word count if I only write one aspect of pronunciation rather than pronunciation teaching.
I also told Dr. Agneta M-L Svalberg about my worry when she came to my poster. Surprisingly, she thought, as for a 10,000 words project, I could follow my original idea entirely. However, she pointed out a problem in the title that I didn’t think up before. She felt uncertain that I could find ‘the best way’ to teach pronunciation. This made me change my title to ‘How to improve pronunciation teaching in Chinese middle school’. The question is indeed to know the real issues about Chinese students on English pronunciation and understand whether it’s really necessary for them to learn more on this aspect during their middle school classes and apply for a change in education? I was asking myself why teachers don’t focus more on this part and what are the issues with the teaching of this. I wanted to talk about something related to the content of my title and then, one of my classmates mentioned that it could be better if linking the teaching and learning of pronunciation with other areas of English in terms of demonstrating the significance of teaching and learning English pronunciation. It is true that the relation between English pronunciation with speaking and listening as well as vocabulary may reflect advantages of pronunciation itself, something I never thought of before so I could learn a lot on the beneficial traits of the pronunciation.
我还告诉阿涅塔·M-L·斯瓦尔伯格医生，当她看到我的海报时，我很担心。令人惊讶的是，她想，对于一个10000字的项目，我完全可以按照我原来的想法去做。然而，她指出了我以前没有想到的标题中的一个问题。她不确定我能否找到教发音的“最佳方法”。这使我把自己的头衔改成了“如何提高汉语中学的发音教学”。问题确实在于了解中国学生在英语发音方面的真正问题，并了解他们是否真的需要在中学期间学习更多这方面的知识并申请改变教育？我在问自己，为什么老师不把更多的精力放在这一部分，这部分的教学有什么问题。我想谈一些与我的题目内容有关的事情，然后，我的一个同学提到，如果把发音的教学与英语的其他领域联系起来，以证明教和学英语发音的意义，那就更好了。的确，英语发音与口语和听力以及词汇的关系可能反映出发音本身的优势，这是我以前从未想到的，因此我可以学到很多关于发音的有益特征。Moreover, a teacher from ELTU gave me a suggestion that it may be worth of finding out how pronunciation go through with communicative language teaching when discussing teaching approach to English pronunciation in the professional enquiry. Meanwhile, the ELTU teacher suggested that looking into what should the teacher do when students made mistakes during practice could be a part of research issues. Results from this may reflect different results of influences that various error correction strategies have on the learning of pronunciation. What’s more, another student in my class noted that the age of students starting learning pronunciation and students’ accent as well as students’ motivation could be taken into consideration in regard to factors that affect the learning of pronunciation. We used to think more young we learn a language like English and more it’s easy to catch the pronunciation. With regard to research methodology, my supervisor Jenny unfolds a list of suggestions. To begin with, Jenny gave suggestion about sampling in research for students.
Originally, I intended to invite 20 students to do the research. However, I was told that the number of participants of quantitative research should be at least of 30 persons. I learnt also that it could be better if the number of participants is between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. This range of ages would be good even though they tend to be less focused on their learning than when they’re older. This could challenge my understanding and make me mull over on how we should teach pronunciation and which improvements should be expected or necessary. Moreover, Jenny also noted that it seems to be more reliable if others such as my critical friends or my MA TESOL classmates could examine the recording after my own analysis.
What made me feel dissatisfactory was that I had no opportunity to talk with any tutor due to the limitation of time. Besides, there were no one who did the similar work around me, and therefore it was a pity that I have no chance to deeply discuss how to improve pronunciation teaching with my classmates. All in all, I was beneficial from the mini conference. Apart from the valuable suggestions that tutors and classmates gave, I was also encouraged and supported by them.
Part B. Professional Enquiry
Abstract
With the development of globalization, English as an international language tend to be widely used all over the world for business, education and many other disciplines where it’s of great use. In many non-English speaking countries, an increasing number of elementary school students seem to be able to communicate in English according to studies and especially in countries of Northern Europe. In the circle of English teachers and researchers, whether pronunciation should be taught has been a controversial issue. It seems for many that it is more important to help learners to develop writing skills or confidence in oral speaking rather than focus on pronunciation issues.
Yet, nowadays, most Chinese middle school students have worked for mastering complicated English grammar and a large part of vocabulary. The English pronunciation is not the primary purpose of the class. This may lead people to think about how is then taught the English pronunciation in Chinese middle school and if the fashion is relevant. The aim of this essay is thus to understand how the Chinese middle school currently work in order to improve pronunciation teaching toward its learners and in consideration of which level they want to reach on this field ? We need to distinguish the native-like level that can be very difficult to get with the level the students got. Therefore, we would see three different types of research through a questionnaire filled by teachers and learners so that we could reply to.
The data collected from the research shows that, the main pronunciation problems Chinese middle school students meet, involves lack of phonology knowledge, which includes sounds discrimination and word stress as well as intonation. The reason why Chinese middle school students seem to be not good at English pronunciation can be then attributed to Chinese education system, learning environment, teachers’ attitude and students’ attitude, separately or combined together. The problem can be fixed by being aware of the importance of pronunciation for both teachers and learners, which requires the teacher master phonology knowledge first and then draws on useful teaching methods and designing appropriate tasks when teaching pronunciation, and the students should become motivated when learning.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents 2
Acknowledgments 3
Part A. The Commentary 4
Part B. Professional Enquiry 7
Abstract 7
Introduction 8
1.1 About the Teaching Context 10
1.2 Aims of the Project 11
1.3 Organization of the Professional Enquiry 12
1.4 Research methods 13
1.4.1 Questionnaire survey method 13
1.4.2. Recording method 15
2. Literature Review 15
2.1 Defining Phonology 15
2.2 Pronunciation Teaching and Learning 16
2.2.1 Should Pronunciation be taught? 17
2.2.2 The Importance of Pronunciation Teaching and Learning 18
2.2.3 Goals of pronunciation teaching and learning 20
2.2.4 Intelligibility 22
2.2.5 Roles of Teacher and Learner 23
2.2.6 The difference between Chinese pronouncing and English pronouncing 25
2.3 Factors that affect pronunciation learning 26
2.4 Methods of Teaching Pronunciation 28
3. Reasons to improve pronouncing in Chinese Middle School 29
3.1 Teachers and students in Chinese Middle School think that is very important to learn English pronunciation well 30
3.2 There are some problems existing in the process of English pronunciation teaching and learning 34
3.3 Only learn English pronunciation well, can really achieve the purpose of communication in English. 38
4. Ways to improve pronouncing in Chinese Middle School 39
4.1. Strengthen the construction of teaching staff 43
4.2. Standard English Pronunciation Teaching 43
4.3. To cultivate students' ability of imitation and reading habits 44
5. Conclusion 45
Appendix A 46
Questionnaire for Student 46
Appendix B 49
Questionnaire for Teacher 49
Appendix C 50
References 51
Introduction
According to Murphy (2011), during the last few years, English class has been a thorny issue since English is increasingly more necessary all over the world, and therefore the issue is about whether appropriate English phonological models should appear in the ESL (English as Second Language).
Murphy (2011) points out also that this issue has gradually hinged on a specific question: should ESL learners be encouraged to achieve the goal of one particular native variety of English pronunciation? Is it true that linguistic variation can be seen as a common feature that every language has, and thus is it necessary for a better use of the language and a more relevant exchange?
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5. Conclusion
In the circle of English teachers and researchers, whether pronunciation should be taught have been controversial issues. Different perspectives on the value of teaching pronunciation from English teachers depend on what types of approaches the teachers apply when teaching English. Pronunciation teaching and learning have to be paid great attention to, even though communication could be the ultimate goal of speaking, not only what people communicate but also how well people communicate are influenced by pronunciation. It is beneficial for people to have better pronunciation as it may be of great help to communicate, especially for intelligibility. It is true that people who have good pronunciation are more easily understood when communicating than people who have worse performance on pronunciation and this is a matter of prime importance. The goal of learning pronunciation can be regarded as achieving intelligibility, and all an intelligible speaker is required to do is to make listeners understand what he/she actually wants to express in a certain situation when speaking with others. Pronunciation is teachable and is influential to the learning of other skills of English, and English pronunciation does have close connection with vocabulary and speaking as well as listening. Both the teacher and the learner ought to play their own roles accordingly. There is no doubt that better achievements of pronunciation teaching and learning are related to the dedicated teacher as well as the learner who is motivated and with self-monitoring ability. There are six factors that may have influence on pronunciation learning, including the native language, the age factor, amount of exposure, phonetic ability, attitude and identity and motivation and concern for good pronunciation. Through three different types of research methods, how pronunciation is taught currently in Chinese middle school and students’ attitude to pronunciation learning and the main pronunciation mistakes made by students were found. Combining the data collected from the research and literature review, the proposed plan for professional development was done.
All in all, it can be seen that English pronunciation plays a vital role even though it’s hard to get a native-like accent when the student is not immersed in the country and relies only on middle school. This latter may be a goal in order to help students to reach though intelligibility and showcase a very satisfying proficiency. This project is just a beginning, and how to teach pronunciation in a specific way should be consistently looked into further researches.
Word count: 10209
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