The Application Of Social Strategies In English Pronunciation Learning

Language is a vehicle for communication, and poor pronunciation often causes breakdowns in communication. Also, Gimson (2001) says, one needs to learn almost 100%of its pronunciation,50-90%grammar, and only 1%vocabulary in order to speak a new language. So, students show a lot interest and make great efforts in getting a good pronunciation. Moreover, confidence gained by their nice pronunciation in most cases leads to their success in speaking and other language skills. However, pronunciation, as a teaching must, is often neglected to both researchers and teachers. Researches on how to teach pronunciation are few, let alone teachers’teaching techniques. On pronunciation lessons, the teacher usually reads as an example for students to imitate. Though Wang (2004) proposes that imitation is the major pattern for learning, which starts from identifying by listening, moves on to the analysis by brain, and then acts by motorium, this kind of repeated tedious teaching and learning makes the teachers dominant of the classroom while students are rather passive. Constructivism believes that learning should be a process in which the students actively try to construct and take in information. Thus, in English pronunciation training, teachers should cultivate students’ability to monitor their own learning process. More importantly, as ones’English pronunciation ability is largely determined by one’s practice, teachers should put more energy on strengthening students’cooperation and improving their involvement to better teaching effect.So in this thesis, the author tries to apply social strategies in English pronunciation learning so as to turn students into active learners who cooperate with each other to learn pronunciation. Wenden (1985) proposes that language teachers should distribute as much time in learner training as in language training. His proposal forged the idea of learning strategy training. Oxford (1986) also supports the idea, claiming that learning strategies are of great importance because they "improve language performance, encourage learner autonomy, are teachable, and expand the role of the teacher in significant ways".The author tends to achieve two goals in this thesis. The first one, to prove that the application of social strategies predicts a gain in learners’pronunciation skills, and it is achieved through a detailed review of literatures concerning pronunciation teaching and language learning strategies, as well as through data collected in the case study.The case study was done among 58 English major freshmen students from Chengdu Institute Sichuan International Studies University through pre-training questionnaire, while-training peer correction and team practice tables, and periodical recordings, and after-training student interviews, and an error counting table. And the training of social strategies in pronunciation learning proved to be of help to develop students to achieve a higher level of pronunciation ability. The questionnaire employed strengthens the rational for training students’pronunciation in a systematic way, and shows that most students are cooperative to pronunciation training as most of them have high expectation to improve their pronunciation through training. The tables employed during the study provide raw data about phonemes which students have difficulty in pronouncing, and they reflect the influence of one’s native language and local tone in his foreign language pronunciation. Moreover, the student interviews which were done at the end of the study collect much information as to students’attitude toward the training, and their personal assessment of the effectiveness of the training. At the same time, they as learners also found some useful tactics which are invaluable both to one’s pronunciation and language learning on the whole, such as monitoring oneself in learning. During the case study, a framework of how to apply social strategies in pronunciation learning is also formed for teachers follow. And this is the second goal of the thesis.Nevertheless, due to the limited research time and the author’s ability, much still needs to be improved or further researched. Similar study may be done on other English learners such as non-English majors, other pronunciation learning strategies may also be applied, and the assessment of the study may also be modified.