The Negative Transfer of Hu Xian county Dialect on English Pronunciation

【Abstract】Hu Xian county dialect is one kind of Shaanxi dialect. The English learners here are greatly affected by their dialect unconsciously. This paper is to study the negative transfer of Hu Xian county dialect on students English speech sounds， and explore the effective teaching methods.

【Key words】Hu Xian county dialect； negative transfer； methods.

【作者简介】牛楠，陕西师范大学。

1. Introduction

When local students learn English， there exist a phenomenon of transfer between the L1 and L2. The author teaches in a countryside primary school in Hu Xian county， students there tend to speak English with a strong， distinct accent. In this paper， the author wants to analyses the mistakes and causes， and explore some practical solutions.

2. The negative transfer of Hu Xian county dialect

The students study English from Grade 3， they can learn English very quickly， but they can not speak accurate English. Dialect always effect on their English pronunciation when they begin to learn the English pronunciation. The common problems are as follows：

2.1 /u/ and /ou/

The first phenomenon is that in Hu Xian DaWang primary school， Almost every child can not distinguish /u/ and /ou/. Because the sound /ou/ influenced by their dialect， they usually mix /u/ and /ou/ in Chinese.

For example， “土豆” /tu/—/tou/， “小組” /zu/—/zou/. Nearly every local people will be confused on these words when speak Chinese. A teacher in the school once participate in a speech competition， her performance is really good， except for a pronunciation “祖国” /zu/—/zou/.She tried to correct but always read the wrong sound unconsciously. The same as English，when reading to/tu/， do/du/， good/gud/， book/buk/， students will easily read /tu/—/tou/， /du/—/dou/. All these characteristics will transferred into English when the students in Hu Xian county learn English. The best method for students is to practice more such sounds in their mandarin.

2.2 /θ/ and /?/

Most students meet difficulties when they read the words like ‘thank，‘three，‘that，‘the and ‘they. Although they can tell the main difference among /θ/， /s/， /?/， /z/， they can hardly use their tongue tip correctly. My students can not pronounce /θ/ and /?/ in a right way， because there is no such counterparts sounds in their dialect phonetic system. So they pronounce some similar sounds to replace them. They usually pronounce /s/ and /z/ to replace /θ/ and /?/.

3. Countermeasures and Methods