Influence Of Erdos Dialect’s Accent On The Acquisition Of RP From The Perspective Of Negative Language Transfer

Pronunciation plays an important role in the process of second language learning, which is also the foundation of the language. In peoples’ daily communication, different sounds and tones express different feelings and meanings, and the oral language, which is signified by pronunciation, is the basis of the appearance and development of written language. Therefore, acquisition of pronunciation plays an important role in second language learning. In secong language leaning, the knowledge of the first language can indeed have a facilitation or inhibition effect on the process in learning a new language. Normally, facilitation effect is known as positive transfer, whereas inhibition is regarded as negative transfer which is more obvious in pronunciation acquisition. However, due to the different language systems between Chinese and English, learners, especially adult learners, often compare the English sounds with those similar ones in their native language and regional dialects while learning English and will inevitably be affected by the native language and their reginal dialects in varying degrees.From theoretical point of view, the influence of Chinese and dialect pronunciation on learners’English is the result of language transfer, which is mainly reflected on the levels of pronunciation, vocabulary and sentence. Chinese students meet with similar problems when learning the English pronunciation, while due to the distinctions in dialect speeh features, the learners from different dialect regions will encounter some particular different difficulties apart from the common ones. Therefore, research on phonetic transfer should not be confined to the general comparison between Chinese and English, but to consider particular dialect features so as to provide more specific and effective suggestions for teaching.From the perspective of Phonetics and transfer theory, this thesis explores the language negative transfer of Erdos dialect sounds on learners’ acquisition of English pronunciation so as to provide some effective suggestions. The research questions are:(1) How do the finals of Erdos local accent influence its local students’ acquisition of RP vowels?(2) How do the initials of Erdos local accent influence its local students’ acquisition of RP consonants?(3) What can be done to improve the English pronunciation in Erdos?The research is carried out through an experiment designed for50first-year college students who come from local region. Firstly, a survey study is employed in the research to investigate their personal background information and phonetic background information. Then the subjects are asked to read the designed reading materials and a tape recorder will be used to record the contents and these recorded tapes will be analyzed. a face-to-face interview will also be adopted in order to keep the reliability and validity of the research. The present study on the sound system of Erdos dialect is a precious supplement to the research of Chinese dialect.