The Problems On The Application Of Textbook Go For It In English Phonetic Teaching And The Countermeasures

Phonetics is closely related to words, listening and communication. New Course Syllabusfor English (Hereinafter referred to as “NCSFE”) describes level-5phonetic goal for graduatesof junior high school, which requests the students to understand English phonetics includingpronunciation, stress, linking, intonation, rhythm and so on. Currently, the textbook Go for Itpublished by People Education Press is applied most widely in junior high schools. Although itis adapted from American origin, in accordance with the requirements of NCSFE, the actualeffect of application, especially in terms of phonetic teaching, is still far away from therequirement of level-5phonetic goal stipulated in NCSFE. So, it has become a hot topic to makea research on teaching phonetics effective with the textbook Go for It.In order to improve the quality of phonetic teaching under present situation of junior highschool, the author takes the users of the textbook from four schools in Yueyang city as researchsubjects, makes a survey on phonetic teaching of textbook Go for It, discovers and confirmsproblems after data analysis, which can be listed as follows:“dumb English” still exists inEnglish teaching classroom of junior high school, some students are suffering from inaccurateand broken pronunciation, and they cannot phonetically spell words independently. Then, theauthor explains the causes for problems: the connection of phonetic teaching content betweenprimary school and junior high school is not well matched, the correct and proper phoneticinput is inadequate, NCSFE has not been implemented thoroughly in practice and the phoneticteaching methods lag behind the requirements of NCSFE.After analyzing these causes comprehensively, the author puts forward countermeasuressuch as follows: the connection of phonetic teaching contents between primary school andjunior high school should be ensured, a correct and active phonetic input environment should beestablished, the implementation of NCSFE should be strengthened and the teachers’ concept forEnglish phonetic course design should be renewed according to NCSFE. From the practice perspective, the author makes a phonetic teaching design of Go for Itwith the concept of NCSFE, and combines the students’ actual needs with teaching to carry it outin the English phonetic teaching class of junior high school, which lasts for four months.(1) To ensure the effective implementation of NCSFE, diagnostic interpretation of thetextbook is done and the key and difficult points, as well as the phonetic teaching objectives,within phonetic teaching are identified;(2) In order to ensure the systematic of phoneticteaching, the author analyzes the students, including their phonetic achievements, goals ofphonetic learning and so on;(3) Based on the scientific concept of curriculum design, theauthor develops the following phonetic teaching approaches: phonetic alphabets are taughtwith the help of previous three preparatory units, speech flow are taught with the help of textcontents, and the teaching methods for phonetic alphabets and speech flow are illustratedrespectively;(4) In order to construct a good environment for phonetic input, the authorenlarges studying content of extra-curriculum and increases the amount of phonetic videoresources, combining with various forms of learning activities such as group cooperation,dialogues and games;(5) By evaluating the advantages of the phonetic teaching, the authorevaluates and reflects on it, and checks the effect of phonetic teaching by an effectiveapproach.After the phonetic teaching, many improvements can be found with the research subjects:(1) Most of the them in the class have mastered the reading and spelling rules, and they are ableto read and spell the phonetic alphabets independently;(2) The phenomenon of “phoneticallyspelling the words with the help of Chinese characters” is greatly reduced, and they are able toindependently read the new words in word lists;(3) They can read texts more fluently thanbefore;(4) The students have more confidence and are willing to participate in the oralactivities. Thus the effectiveness of measures for phonetic teaching is proved.