On Natural Speech’s Role in Chinese Students’ English Listening Comprehension

Its a big headache for all of the English teachers to improve Chinese students competence in listening comprehension because Chinese students always find it difficult to follow the normal-speed English. It seems there is a gap between the Chinese Students and the native speaker. The English teachers have been working hard to narrow the gap for a long time. But it is really a tough work to go ahead.

But a strange phenomenon coexists: after reading the tapescripts the students will find them easier than they think. There may be different reasons to the embarrassment. For example, insufficient exposure to the language environment, lack of cultural background knowledge and listening skills, spending time doing the translation from English to Chinese during listening, the different expression and custom between the two language are all responsible to their poor listening ability. But a very important reason, which is often overlooked, is natural speech. It is contained in the process of native speakers oral speech. It is established by usage in English. It consisits of several aspects which affect the listening comprehension.

The first aspect is the weak forms. As we know the same Chinese character can be pronounced in strong form and weak form in different situation. The most grammatical, form words have what is called one or more weak forms when they are unaccented as is usual and a strong form only when they are accented(in special situations or when said in isolation). The weak forms appear more often than the strong forms and thus it might well be said that in connected speech the weak forms are more normal than strong forms. Lots of function words such as at, of, the, to, as, and, a, his, an, but, been, for, her, we, shall, then, them are found to occur in their weak forms in over 90 percent of occurrences.(Gimson 1981:45) The strong form only can be seen in sentences to emphasize or indicate some special meaning. So weak forms are the normal forms in English speech. Its very common to find so many weak forms in a native speakers dialogue.That explains why some Chinese students can only hear the words in strong form in the tape.The English teachers are responsible for this issue. Because lots of English teachers try to pronounce every word clearly so that the students can master it during classroom teaching. Teachers always tend to ask students to imitate their pronounciation in strong form after their model. In this way students get a deep impression of the words in strong form. The weak forms which are used frequently are often overlooked. For example, a easy example“Could you tell me the time?” are normally accented “'kud ju °tel mi′taim?‖” by the native speaker. If the students has a good range of background knowledge in English culture and some creative imagination they can guess the exact meaning of the sentence without difficulty. Unfortunately not every sentence is as easy as this one. If long sentences full of weak forms are read in a short time, its no longer a piece of cake for the Chinese students to get the information.

So if the students get the rules about the weak form, the problem becomes easier to solve. As compared with the strong form, the weak forms show:

(1) obscuration of vowels towards//, /i/, /u/; for example: an/n/, but that is an apple /' t sn﹑pl/.

(2) elision of vowels or/and consonants; for example:do/du:/ but in “what do you mean?”,“ do you” are pronounced /dju:/.

(3) reductions of the length of sounds. for example: to/tu:/, but in something to eat, “ to” is accented /tu/.

Lots of grammatical words such as some conjunctions, pronons, verbs, determiners, prepositions and the word “there” have such kind of weak form and are used in certain conditions. English teachers should introduce the ordinary weak forms to the Chinese students during the class and choose the normal-speed English tape for the students to practice the listening. I think the “Special English” will do no good to the Chinese students but a mislead to them.

The second aspect is the rhythm. Speech rhythm is essentially a tendency for the stressed syllables to occur at more or less regular intervals of time. Every language has its own characteristic rhythm. As Professor T.K. Kwei state English rhythm follow the“stress-time” rules but Chinese rhythm follow the “syllable-timed” rules. The same sentence has many ways of rhythm according to different language situation. Litening comprehension also requests the ability of analysising the“feet” arrangement immediately from the students. Thus imitation helps a lot in this field.

The third aspect is the assimilation. Assimilation refer, in

a broad sense, to the influence exercised by one sound segment upon the articulation of its neighbouring sound within the word or at word boundaries, so that these two sounds become more alike, or identical. For example: ten man /′tem′men/. The two words are close to each other, /n/ is replaced by /m/ before /m/. And this phenomena are also found in rapid and casual speech. For example: good night /′gun′nait/. If the student are familiar with the rules, they can know the original sentence easily.

The fourth aspect is the linking.Linking are widely used in the natural speech. The pronounciations of some phrases are changed by the way of linking. So it is not easy for the students to identify the sentence. Linking can be divided into different types. When most of the consonants such as /p/, /t/, /d/, /m/, /∫/ etc. followed by a vowel, they can be read together. For example: "hand it”, “teach English”, “come out”. When two vowels are contained in junctures where the preceding word ends in /i:/, /i/, /ei/, /ai/or/i/ a slight linking [j] adds between the two vowels. e.g.

may ask /mei‵(j)a:sk/. In junctures where the preceding word ends in /u:/, / u/ or /au/ a slight linking[w] may be heard between the two vowels. e.g. two others / tu:‵(w)z/. To solve the tough problem the students should have enough time to be exposed to the language environment. In this condition pair work between the Chinese students wouldnt work well. Students should make every chance to communicate with the native speaker as well as watching or listening the English programs. Among these activities, the students should pay more attention to the linking in the speech. Then they will master the way the native speakers express gradually.

The fifth aspect is elision, which refer to the omission of sounds in rapid, causual speech. E.g. The word and, /?/and /d/ are omited in oral speech:

/′b izn ‵g:lz/.

Continuant consonant +t or d+ word initial consonant(except /h/ and /j/):

/-st/ next day/neks dei/

Although its difficult to memorize the rules of elision,

judging from the experience and rules of pronunciation the chinese students can get across the gap of elision smoothly.

The last aspects is intonation. If the same sentence is

pronounced in different intonation, the meanings are absolutely different sometimes. The tag questions are the typical example of it. E.g.

↘ The speaker is sure he is on the right train.

He hopes to get the positive answer.

Im not on the wrong train, am I? ↗ The speaker isnt sure if he is on the right

train.

So the Chinese students should focus on the intonation besides the content itself. They must know the implied meaning under the literal one.

In a word, the natural speech plays an important role in the Chinese studentslistening comprehension. Good listening abilities request knowing all the above aspects as well as the sufficient exercises, rich cultural background knowledge and exact listening skills. But the Chinese students are fairly weak in the former aspects. So all the English teachers still have a long way to go.

Reference:

[1]George Yule. The study of language[M]. Beijing: Foreign Lannguge Teaching and Research Press, 2000.

[2]张凤桐.英国英语语音学和音系学[M] 成都:四川大学出版社, 2002

[3]Jeremy Harmer. How to Teach English[M]. Beijing: Foreign Lannguge Teaching and Research Press, 2000.

作者简介:康春晓(1980-),讲师,吉林长春人,研究方向为课程与教学论,浙江经济职业技术学院基础部公共外语教研室教师。