Teaching Effects Of English Songs On Junior High School Students’ Acquisition Of English Stress

This thesis studied the effects of English songs on junior high school students’ English stress perception and production.English is a stress language,while Chinese is a tone language.Chinese learners are often affected by the negative transfer of their mother tongue,and usually have some difficulties in English stress learning.In recent years,the effects of English songs on listening abilities,vocabulary learning and English stress learning have been extensively discussed.However,few research has examined using English songs as a means to improve Chinese junior high school students’ stress acquisition.The current study is thus undertaken with the primary goal to examine the suitability and effects of English songs on Chinese junior high school students’ English stress acquisition from an acoustic point of view.This thesis studies the following two questions:What is the effect of English song teaching on junior high school students’ English stress perception?And,what is the effect of English song teaching on their English stress production?Forty students from a junior high school in Jiangsu Province were chosen as the research subject.This study consisted of English stress perception and production tests.Prior to the experiment,an accent test was conducted to select forty participants(20 students in experimental class,20 students in control class)with similar pronunciation proficiency.The purpose of the pre-test questionnaire was to investigate students’ current English learning situation and whether they were willing to try English song teaching.After that,English stress perception pre-test and English stress production pre-test were held among experimental class(EC)and control class(CC).The aim was to ensure that EC and CC students had no significant differences in English stress perception and production before the experiment.A four-week teaching experiment was carried out,in which English song teaching were used in EC,while students of the CC still used the traditional teaching method.After the experiment,a post-questionnaire and post-tests for perception and production were carried out.The perception results indicated that English song teaching significantly improved experimental class(EC)students’ English stress perception after four weeks of English song teaching.The results were found not only in words that had been learnt in songs but also in unknown words that had not been learnt in songs.On the production side,the results revealed that for words that had been learnt in songs,English song teaching significantly improved stress-induced duration and intensity for EC students.For unknown words that had not been learnt in songs,EC students’ intensity was significantly improved under English song teaching.It meant that for words that had been learnt in songs,EC students produced longer duration and greater intensity than CC students.For unknown words that had not been learnt in songs,EC students produced stronger intensity than CC students The perception and production findings are discussed in Chapter 5.The results of this study have significant implications for English stress teaching in junior high schools.The findings highlighted the need of effective approaches in teaching English stress.In particular,teachers and students are encouraged to incorporate English songs into their English stress teaching and learning routines and pay more attention to stress production.In practice,teachers should instruct English stress rules clearly and systematically so that students can understand and internalize these rules.Teachers are also expected to give correct feedback in a timely manner and create a range of learning situations for students to practice these rules,such as interview,role-play and group discussion.In addition,we encourage students to compare their speech with that of a native speaker,through which students can clearly detect their deviations from the native production in English stress.