A Study Of Errors In Elementary School English Teachers’ Intonation

Teachers have great influence on children’s language development,especially the development of pronunciation and intonation.Children experience the Critical Period during their Elementary school years.During the Critical Period in life,people could naturally learn languages with little effort and reach native speakers’ language proficiency.Otherwise,people would experience limitation in foreign or second language learning.A qualified teacher could help students acquire a new language and achieve the level closer to the native speaker’s while an unqualified teacher would have a negative impact on students’ language learning process.The project is inspired by Qingpu professional development initiative.Phonetic courses are provided to Qingpu elementary English teachers in order to improve their English language proficiency and at the same time improve the quality of English phonetic education in Qingpu elementary schools.The initiative provides us with a great opportunity to study the present situation of phonetic education in Qingpu district.The test is designed as a pre-test for phonetic courses.We could have a better understanding of the teachers’ phonological and phonetic knowledge and ability,which would help us to design more individualized learning materials for teachers’ professional development.55 English teachers are randomly chosen from elementary schools in Qingpu district,Shanghai,China,as the subjects of this study.The data are collected from the pre-exam of the phonetic courses which include one written section and one reading section.WaveSurfer is used to analyze both selected sample’s and subjects’ recording files by visualizing the waveform,spectrogram,and pitch contour.The two sections of the test are supplementary.The reading section examines the errors in teachers’ English speech.The written section is used as supporting materials explaining the causes of errors in teachers’ English speech.We could examine if the errors are caused by the lack of knowledge or by the insufficient ability of applying knowledge.The research questions are: What are the errors that exist in the teachers’ English intonation? In what ways are the errors in their intonation related to the teachers’ native language? Based on the findings,what methods can be applied to the teachers’ professional development and class teaching in order to improve both teachers’ and students’ fluency in English?Overall,the teachers’ performance in the written test is not satisfactory.While they have some knowledge of vowels,consonants,they are extremely weak at word stress,sentence stress,and know little about the knowledge of tonic syllable,connected speech and intonation.From the results of the reading test,we measure how much implicit language knowledge of intonation the teachers could apply in their speech by comparing the acoustic data between the teachers and the native speaker.We find three major types of errors from the teachers’ acoustic data: errors in tonic syllable,information focus and tones.The author puts forward three reasons that cause these errors.First is the negative transfer from the native language in foreign language acquisition.Second is the lack of professional knowledge.Third is the uncomprehensive understanding of the context.Based on the results,we find problems in the teachers’ English speech and the causes of these problems.More importantly,we attempt to help improve their intonation as well.Based on the results and discussion,here are five suggestions for the English teachers from Qingpu elementary schools.First,they should expand their knowledge of phonetics and phonology.Second,they should maintain a high expectation of their own language proficiency.Third,they should have the ability to identify errors and mistakes in the students’ speech as well as in their own speech.Fourth,they should have the ability to correct those errors and mistakes.Fifth,teachers should be able to teach students phonetics and phonology with modern technology.On the district level,the author proposes an ongoing comprehensive professional development system.What’s more,the skills of visualized acoustic chart and elicited imitation that applied in the teacher training could also be applied to the class teaching.With the globalization,the ability of communication highlights its importance.Excellent communication not only depends on the knowledge you possess but also depends on the ability to convey emotion,emphasize key points and generate empathy.These implicit language features are presented in many aspects,including intonation,connected speech,stress,rhythm,etc.In other words,phonetics and phonology education increasingly reveals its importance.The author hopes that this study could provide some useful information for the teachers’ professional development,help them improve their English accuracy and fluency,and eventually improve the quality of English phonetic education in Qingpu district,Shanghai,China.