Interlanguage Phonology Implications for a Remedial Pronunciation Course for Chinese Learners of English精编.pdfVIP

Interlanguage Phonology: Implications for a Remedial Pronunciation Course for Chinese Learners of English Øydis Hide • Kris Van de Poel Centre for Language and Speech • Universiteitsplein 1 • B-2610 Wilrijk ohide@uia.ua.ac.be • vdpoel@uia.ua.ac.be 0. Introduction Adult Chinese students coming to Europe to start on or further their academic career in an English-speaking environment, very often face problems understanding the target language (perception) or making themselves understood (production). This leads to communication problems in almost all communicative settings. An impressionistic analysis of the interlanguage of a group of 19 learners showed serious deviations from the target language. Consequently, the learners were perceived as unintelligent, stubborn and malfunctioning by people in their academic and administrative environments. In other words, the Chinese students foreign accent negatively affects their academic performance and stigmatises them socially (Verhoeven Van de Poel 1994). This social disadvantage is caused by a complex of factors, the most basic of which is that the Chinese phonological system differs strongly from English. Moreover, L1-transfer is almost stereotypical for the entire group (Kenworthy, 1999). When trying to remedy phonetically-phonologically, several factors seem to hinder this process. Even though the students have had at least six years of English classes in secondary school (6 hours a week), their phonetic knowledge of and skills in English are highly deficient and their phonetic errors are deeply rooted (fossilised). This may be due to the fact that the