Common Problems With Phonetic Study Under The Influence Of The Distinctions Between RP And GA

British English and American English are two dominant dialects among all the‘englishes’ in the world. For the non-native English speakers, whether they study English as asecond language or a foreign language, most of them will choose these two accents to imitateand practice. With the US becoming a world power and holding a high status of economy andpolitics, its language has also gained tremendous vitality. Thus the American accent ofEnglish is gradually taking the place of British accent. However, because of the tradition ofEnglish language, the standard of its pronunciation and usage, and its acceptance by society,British accent is still the most appreciated accent in the media programmes, internationalformal conferences and English teaching in non-English speaking countries in the world.Nowadays more and more English majors in Chinese colleges and universities lay theirfavour on GA, General American, which is regarded as the standard American accent ofEnglish adopted by the educated people and the media in the US. British accent, which refersto RP, Received Pronunciation or Standard British accent in this study, is still appreciated bya lot of students. But it seems difficult for English majors in China to speak English withstandard British or American accent, for they always neglect some phonetic and phonologicalfeatures in either of them, especially the distinctions in the articulatory places and manners ofthe vowels.The primary objective of this study was to inquire the mistakes that the English majorsin Chinese colleges and universities often make while speaking English with American accent,and explore the causes of these problems. The present paper begins with the differencesbetween British English accent and American English accent, discusses the surveys of thecollege English majors’ phonetic preference of English accents and the characteristics of theirfactual English accents, lists the mistakes commonly met in the English majors’ speakingAmerican accent of English, and finally analyzes the causes of the problems leading to themistakes.