Research On English Phonetic Teaching In Rural Junior High School Based On Context Theory

Phonetics is the foundation of vocabulary,grammar,reading,listening,and speaking,the basis for the existence and development of language,and the material medium of semantics.Therefore,the importance of phonetics is self-evident.However,restricted by the examination system,some teachers only focus on the segment while ignoring the suprasegmental,and the phenomenon is obvious in rural junior high schools.Context theory has been widely used in English teaching in recent years.However,through reviewing the literature,we can find that context theory research in English teaching mainly focuses on vocabulary,grammar,etc.,and there is relatively little research in phonetic teaching.Therefore,the study applies the context theory to EPT in rural junior high schools to explore suitable contextual teaching methods and verify its effectiveness at the segment and suprasegmental.The research questions are as follows:(1)What is the current situation of rural junior high school students’ attitude to phonetic learning,understanding of phonetic knowledge and phonetic ability?(2)What is the effect of the phonetic teaching based on context theory on the phonetic ability of rural junior high school students?In this study,two classes of the first grade of junior high school in a township Z school in Zhoukou City,Henan Province,were selected as the EC and the CC.The experiment lasted for three months.Before the experiment,the research obtained the current situation of English phonetic learning of rural junior high school students through questionnaires and phonetic pretest.The CC adopted the traditional phonetic teaching method during the experiment,while the EC adopted the contextual phonetic teaching method.In the EC,students watched micro-videos related to theme topics to spark their interest before class.In the class,the teacher continued the introduction of text theme scenarios and then derived phonetic knowledge.After class,students used the dubbing software to promote knowledge output effectively.After the experiment,there was a phonetic post-test.All the data were analyzed through SPSS 26.0 and Praat.Finally,interviews were conducted with the students in the EC to investigate their attitudes towards phonetic teaching in the context.The following conclusions are drawn by combining quantitative and qualitative methods:(1)The current situation of English phonetic learning of rural junior high school students is worrying.First,poor learning attitude,since they think the phonetic class is boring,and the proportion of pronunciation in the exam is small.Second,weak theoretical knowledge and their cognition of pronunciation and intonation are relatively one-sided.Third,terrible spoken language.Many students can not read out the fundamental phonemes accurately;(2)Phonetic teaching based on context theory plays a positive role in improving the phonetic ability of rural junior high school students.Based on the findings and discussions of this study,there are some suggestions for phonetic teaching in rural junior high schools:(1)Teachers should enhance their phonological awareness,strengthen their phonetic literacy,and emphasize the importance of phonetics to students;(2)Teachers should apply context theory to English phonetic teaching,and the positive effect of context teaching can stimulate students’ interest and enhance students’ phonetic ability;(3)Teachers should encourage students to use electronic equipment to get in touch with the pronunciation of native speakers.