Acknowledgements I would like to express my appreciation to a number of people for their invaluable assistance in preparation and development of this thesis.
My most sincere thanks would be extended to my supervisor for her valuable suggestions and academic instructions. Without her patient guidance and constant encouragement, the completion of the thesis would be impossible.44270
I would also appreciate the support and cooperation of my tutor and all the students in class 6 in Xuejun Primary School, who participated in the study and made great contributions to my research.
The Application of Phonics to English Phonetic Teaching in Primary School
Abstract A.C.Gimson mentioned in his An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English (1908) that in order to speak any language, one needs to learn almost 100% of its pronunciation, 50%-90% of its grammar and about 1% of its vocabulary, which indicates that pronunciation might be the most significant part of English learning. Thus an efficient phonetic teaching strategy is needed for EFL learners, especially young beginners for the early childhood is the optimal timing of learning phonetics. IPA is a traditional way to teach pronunciation but it neglects the internal relationship between sounds and letters. Learners have to memorize the pronunciations of each word inpidually and separately, which is not very efficient for phonetic learning.
Recently a new method called phonics becomes increasingly popular due to current situation for its simple spelling rules. It first appears in European countries where people regard it as a way to improve people’s reading and writing after many systematic researches. However, there are few researches and papers about whether phonics is suitable in China’s elementary English classroom or whether phonics helps primary school students’ pronunciation. So can the use of phonetic teaching method based on phonics help students’ pronunciation? And when we use the phonics, what are the characteristics of phonetic teaching in China? (Mainly on teacher’s teaching approaches.)
To answer the above questions, experiments have been carried out which last for four weeks. The subjects of the experiments are 49 students of Class 6 Grade 4 and their English teacher in Xuejun Primary School. This study employs the analytical method. By analyzing the tests we can know that phonics does help Ss’ pronunciation. Through observing and analyzing teacher’s phonetic class, it will be easy to see that through the synthetic and analogy-based approaches, Ss can pronounce strange words correctly with the knowledge they have learnt without the help of others, which cultivates Ss’ confidence in phonetic learning. Meanwhile, games, competitions and rewards are needed while processing those approaches, so that Ss can learn pronunciation with great interests and fun, which will make the class more efficient.
Keywords: phonics; phonetic teaching; primary English
自然拼读法在小学语音教学中的应用摘要 Gimson(1908)教授指出:"学会一门语言,一个人只要学会它50%--90%的语法,10%的词汇就够了,但语音必须是100%的掌握。可知在学习英语的过程中,语音是最重要的部分。因此有效的语音教学法对于二语习得者是非常必要的`优尔|文\论*文-网www.youerw.com,尤其是年轻的学习者因为幼儿期是学习语音的最佳时期。国际音标是传统的语音教授法,但是它忽略了音和形的关系,学习者需要记忆每个单词的读法,所以不是一个有效的语音教学法。
基于现在的情况,最近一种新的方法--自然拼读法由于它简单的拼读规则变得越来越流行。这方法首先出现在欧洲国家,经过很多系统的研究后被用来提高人们的阅读和写作水平。然而在国内,很少有关于拼读法是否适用于中国小学英语课堂或者自然拼读法是否对小学生的语音有所帮助的研究。 所以运用自然拼读法可以帮助学生的语音么?并且在运用的过程中,又有什么特点呢?(主要观察老师上课所采取的方法)