A Comparative Study On The Deviation Value Of English Intonation Between Chinese College Students And Native Speakers’ Oral English Intonation Patterns

The thesis mainly deals with the comparative study on the deviation value ofEnglish intonation between Chinese college students and native speakers’oral Englishintonation patterns based on the theoretical framework of English phonetics andsecond language acquisition. The author sorts out lots sound samples, makes detailedacoustic analysis of speakers’English intonation in terms of rhythm, connectivity, andassimilation in connected speech, and works out many experimental results and listssome pedagogical implications. The author devises these experiments and provideslists of conclusions after analyzing some major problems in Chinese English learnersin a bid to improve Chinese English learners’intonation awareness.First of all, the author gives out100sheets of questionnaire in order to collectEnglish learners’knowledge of intonation. Secondly, the author provides10(2males)of the surveyed students a sheet of reading material (short dialogues read by nativespeakers as a reference). Thirdly, the author retrieves the questionnaire and voicerecords for conducting data analyses with software Praat. The thesis contains six parts.Chapter One is an introduction to the phenomenon of Chinese students’ poorpronunciation and unawareness of using right intonation, reemphasis on arousingawareness of using right intonation and the organization of the study. Chapter Two isliterature review, which outlines different research experiments and theories onEnglish intonation. Chapter Three to Five is about the theoretical framework,methodology, data analyses and research results and analysis of the whole thesis fromthe perspective of tonality, tonicity and tone. Chapter Six presents conclusions of thestudy and pedagogical implication, and provides suggestions for future improvements.The author finds out that the informants are confused about English intonation.Confinement of the tentative attempts is the limited number of subjects,systematically mechanical reading and incomprehensive experimental results.