A Research On English Phonetics Problem Of English Majors Of Minority In Guangxi

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is a place for ethnic minorities to live in,and in which people mainly speak kinds of dialects such as the Guiliu dialect,the Zhuang dialect,Hakka dialect and Vernacular dialect.A lot of previous researches have shown that many dialects,especially minority languages can influence English pronunciation and intonation.Although in recent years people have found that this situation had been improved greatly,during her postgraduate period in Guangxi Normal University,the present author had many chances to meet the Zhuang students from minority areas and found many of them still have problems of pronunciation and intonation in learning English because of the influence of their Zhuang language.Most English majors from normal universities would engage in the fundamental English education after graduation,therefore,it can be seen that to study Zhuang students’ English pronunciation problems and find out coping methods not only can help students improve their English learning,but also have the realistic significance in the fundamental English education in future.Enlightened by the relevant studies and based on the transfer theory,Affective Filter Hypothesis and humanism theory,the present research,taking English majors of Zhuang nationality as the subjects,arms at investigating the current situation of Zhuang students’English pronunciation by the means of interview,classroom observation and questionnaire.In addition,23 Zhuang students are chosen randomly to take part in English pronunciation test,and then the present author analyzes their English pronunciation problems according to the record done during the test.The main questions for the present research include(1)Do the English majors of Zhuang nationality still have English phonetics problem commonly during their English learning?(2)What are the main factors causing their problems if they have?(3)What are the methods that can effectively help them to deal with the found problems?The investigation lasts for four months.Through analyzing the result of questionnaire,interview,classroom observation and pronunciation test,it can be found that(1)In the perspective of segmental level,some subjects can’t distinguish the long vowel from the responding short vowel;influenced by their strong Zhuang language,some of them have problems in pronunciation because of their wrong tongue position.(2)Some of them have the problem of turning voiceless constant into voiced constant when they encountered positional variation;besides,sometimes they still have the problems of swallowing sound.(3)From suprasegmental level,some subjects easily encountered the problems of pronunciation in three aspects:stress,liaison and intonation.(4)Due to anxiety,most subjects have pronunciation problems in communication.According to the problems mentioned above,some related suggestions are put forward as follows:Firstly,English teachers in primary school and middle school should pay much attention to pronunciation teaching.Secondly,English phonetics teaching also should also be paid attention to in university,as for minority students from minority areas,their English pronunciation learning should be paid special attention and the method of“taking targeted measures in poverty alleviation”should be adopted for those who really have problems in English pronunciation.Besides,teachers must encourage and guide the students who have pronunciation problems to listen to English recording frequently and practice fearlessly.Thirdly,students should further realize the importance of English phonetics learning and initiatively learn and improve their English pronunciation and intonation.