Visual Information And English Consonant Perception

Based on Mc Gurk Effect,the present study investigates the significance of visual information in senior high school students’ perception of English consonants,aimed at exploring methods beneficial to English phonetic teaching and avoiding the phenomenon of inaccurate second language pronunciation of senior high school students.It mainly answers the following three questions.Firstly,how do ESL learners in senior high school perceive English consonant pairs? Secondly,what is the relationship between oral English competence and English consonant perception? Thirdly,what is the role of visual information in English consonant perception? In order to answer the above three questions,thirty grade two students from a first-level senior high school in Fuzhou are selected as the experimental subjects by means of questionnaire survey and examination results inquiry.By comparing their performance in pre-test and post-test,the role of visual information in the perception of consonant pairs is verified.There are four major findings.First and foremost,the biggest obstacle for ESL learners in senior high school lies in the discrimination of two pairs of consonants which are /s//θ/ and /θ//e/.Specifically,high-score group has difficulty in distinguishing nine consonant pairs which are /p//b/,/t//d/,/f//v/,/s//z/,/m//n/,/n//?/,/w//v/,/s//θ/ and /θ//e/.For students in low-score group,in addition to the above consonant pairs,they also have problems in perceiving /l//r/,/s//?/ and /k//g/.Besides,due to improper category assimilation,such as classifying English consonants /s//θ/ as Chinese consonant [s],mother tongue has a negative effect on senior high school students’ consonant perception to some extent.In addition,there is a positive correlation between students’ competence of spoken English and the perception ability of English consonants.The performance of high-score group is significantly better than that of low-score group.Finally,the combination of visual information and auditory information can significantly improve the accuracy of consonant perception.Interfered by emotional factors,the utility of visual information as a single perceptual model remains to be explored.According to the experimental results,the pedagogical implications of this study are as follows.First of all,English phonetic teaching should be carried out throughout the teaching activities to increase the using frequency of spoken English and to improve language familiarity.In the process of English teaching,teachers should attach great importance to phonetic teaching,guide students to raise their awareness of phonetic learning and provide them with opportunities to speak English.Secondly,teachers should consciously guide students to observe the manner and place of articulation of different phonemes,distinguish them from phonemes in mother tongue,establish new phonetic categories and avoid negative transfer.Therefore,as the imitation model of students,teachers should improve their oral competence to ensure the correctness of the outputs in the teaching process.Finally,visual approach and multimedia equipments should be employed to combine visual information and auditory information and vividly show the way phonemes are produced.Through the establishment of easily understandable and dynamic teaching mode,students’ interest and efficiency will be improved.