Analysis Of The Reading Errors Relating To Word Swallowing In English Consonant-Final Words By Pupils

In oral English, the phenomenon of sound swallowing of words happens quite often. It especially prevails among English beginners, i.e. primary school students. This thesis takes Grade 3 students as its research object and the swallowing sound phenomenon in reading English words ending with consonant as examples, and make a detailed analysis of English swallowing sound phenomenon, in order to find out its causes and finally put forward some referential solutions.The thesis selects 216 important words, which include 145 consonant-final words, from the English textbooks for Grade 1 to 3 (Renjiaoban Compulsory Education Textbooks) as its linguistic data. The 145 English words are classified and organized into a small test according to the manners of the ariticulation of English consonants. English teachers carry out the consonant-final words reading test among the students. They sort out the phenomenon of sound swallowing in the test, and make analysis of the result. After analysis, it is found that most students in Grade 3 will swallow sound when reading those consonant-final words. It is much more frequent when they read the words ending with/t/,/d/and /n/. Word swallowing like this is influenced by various factors, which are intralinguistic, or interlinguistic. For example, there are no consonant clusters in Chinese while a lot in English. As English beginners, primary school students are easily affected by Mandarin pronunciation method, and as a result they have difficulty in pronouncing the last sound of consonant-final words. For example, they will pronounce the word maths/m(?)θs/ as /m(?)/ or even/m(?)/. For this reason, during pronunciation teaching, teachers should conduct targeted guidance and training to help them cultivate proper reading awareness and pronunciation habits, so that the phenomenon of sound swallowing will be reduced when they read consonant-final words. What’s more, the reduction of the phenomenon of sound swallowing can promote the fluency and accuracy of word reading of students. It also has a positive effect on improving the speed and accuracy of simple paragraphs reciting when the students go into middle and senior grades.The research of the phenomenon of sound swallowing in the consonant-final words by pupils aims to provide some solutions to the phenomenon of sound swallowing in primary school pronunciation teaching, for example, teachers should strengthen the awareness of phonics teaching method, listen to the original English materials, encourage students to imitate these materials’pronunciation and intonation. Meanwhile, this thesis will provide some reference for how to avoid the phenomenon of sound swallowing when teaching pupils to learn and read English consonant-final words.