Application Study Of The Underhill Phonemic Chart In Junior High School

Pronunciation is an important part in language,as well as the foundation of English learning.And most of all,the phonetic symbols are central in pronunciation,playing a key role in pronunciation even the whole language teaching.Much attention has been paid to English pronunciation,thus many teaching methods and strategies to improve English pronunciation teaching have been proposed by domestic researchers.However,the feasibility study of teaching tools in English pronunciation teaching is absent.Adrian Underhill is committed to English pronunciation teaching research and practice.What's more,many of his methods and achievements are widely used in English teaching.Here the Underhill phonemic chart is a contribution that he has done to English pronunciation teachingThis paper attempts to verify whether the Underhill phonemic chart can help students achieve the requirements of the curriculum standard in two months.And to what extent can the application of the Underhill phonemic chart help English pronunciation teaching in Junior high school.At the very beginning of this thesis,some basic theories and empirical studies related to pronunciation teaching are introduced.They are phonetics,suprasegmental phonology(stress and rhythm,intonation),classification of phonetic errors,and comprehensive input.Next is the status of phonetic teaching,and then the relationship between the phonetic transcription and the pronunciation is explained.Furthermore,it is the comparative analysis between International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA)in the textbook published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press(FLTRP)and Underhill phonemic chart.The paper adopts control group,experimental group,pre-tests and post-tests to conduct the research.The experimental class is assigned to use the Underhill phonemic chart and the control class sticks to International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA).Besides,the teaching lasts for 2 months and the test content of the pre-test and the post-test is the same,including 25 phonemes(25 points),17 words and 4 phrases(55 points),and 8 sentences(20 points).The tests are accomplished in language lab.The pre-tests are carried out at the start of the school year to know the current situation of English pronunciation of those two classes,and the errors existing in students' pronunciation.The post-tests are applied after two months to compare the teaching efficiency of two different phonetic alphabets and to verify the assumptions.As a result,after two-month application of the Underhill phonemic chart in pronunciation teaching,students basically achieve the requirements of the curriculum standard.Students master the correct pronunciation of some error-prone phonemes in the pre-tests.In addition,all students know well the intonation on wh-questions,declarative sentence and exclamatory sentence.What's more,the Underhill phonemic chart is more effective in teaching the pronunciation of vowels.The design of the Underhill phonemic chart helps students understand the content of language material.Because the layout of the phonemes corresponds to the place of the articulation in mouth.Moreover,the teaching activities created by Underhill in his book Sound Foundations not only make pronunciation teaching touchable and sensible but focus on students' interest,present English level and knowledge.Finally,some pedagogical suggestions are put forward to improve research and teachers' English pronunciation teaching ability in view of the research design,the use of the Underhill phonemic chart and the analysis of results.