| As we all know, language is a tool for communication; in particular, vocal language expresses information through sounds. Therefore, pronunciation plays a vital role in the oral communication. A good grasp of pronunciation is not only conducive to express the exact thoughts, but also has a great impact on promoting an accurate capture of information. As a result, pronunciation teaching plays an important role in English teaching. However, the status quo of pronunciation teaching cannot be optimistic at universities in China. On one hand, English pronunciation teaching has long been neglected in China; on the other hand, pronunciation teaching is so ineffective because of many problems in traditional classroom teaching. As for the specific pronunciation problem of Chinese college students, because of the differences between the phonetic systems between Chinese and English, they still have serious problems in phonemes. However, Phoneme is the smallest unit of pronunciation, so learning the sound of each phoneme well is the key to learn English pronunciation. Consequently, there is urgent need for the English teachers to attend to students' pronunciation of phonemes.With the rapid development and popularity of computer technology, it has gradually penetrated into all aspects of English teaching. Computer-Aided Pronunciation Teaching softwares have emerged. With the integration of Autonomous Speech Recognition technology, these softwares could provide individualized practice and immediate feedback for pronunciation learning. From a theoretical perspective, ASR-based CAPT softwares should be effective in students'pronunciation learning, however, how is their effectiveness on improving students'pronunciation competence in the specific implementation of teaching needs more scientific and empirical research support.In this study, one of the ASR-based CAPT softwares-My English Tutor (MyET) was selected. The author attempted to test the relative effectiveness of the software on improving the quality of Chinese college students'problematic phonemes. First, according to Neri (2006)'s method, the five problematic phonemes for Chinese university students were selected:[i], [e], [ei], [6], [v]. Then 150 copies of a background questionnaire were handed out to six classes among freshmen of Hunan University. The aim of the questionnaire was to have a whole picture of current situation of Chinese college students'phonetic study, and to assure the necessity and significance of the following phoneme training. Thirty of the 150 students took part in the phoneme training. They were divided into two groups:the experimental group and the control group. To assure that the two groups'phonetic competence was equivalent before the training, they were grouped in accordance with the result of a pre-test on the problematic phonemes. After that, the students in the experimental group received phonetic training with MyET, while the control group received phonetic instruction in the form of traditional, teacher-led class. In order to control variables as many as possible, the content and the task of the training were fixed. During the training, the students'response in classroom was carefully observed and recorded to see the students'response to different instruction and emotional performance. At the end of the phonetic training, both groups had a post-test (the same as pre-test). Furthermore, the experimental group members were asked to answer an evaluation questionnaire of MyET after the instruction.The SPSS was used to analyze the data of the two tests. The results indicated that both groups made significant progress in segmental quality, but the improvements of two groups were not significantly different. That is to say, MyET was equally effective as the teacher-led instruction in improving the college students' quality of problematic phonemes. In addition, the collated responses from the questionnaire showed that almost all the students in the experimental group held a positive attitude toward the new learning method. Furthermore, the students in the experimental group provided some suggestions on the design for the future improvement of MyET.The results of the study show that ASR-based CAPT software-MyET is effective for the Chinese college students to improve their segmental quality. In particular, given the current situation of Chinese college English classes, computer-assisted instruction can relieve teachers'loads and improve learners'autonomous learning competence. Therefore, it has broad application prospects in college English teaching in China. The findings also provide some development implications for the future improvement of the software and pedagogical implications for computer-assisted pronunciation teaching and learning.
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