Good morning, everyone:

I am so glad to be here today. We are going to study English pronunciation (phonetics and phonology) together with you all in this coming semester. I hope that you can learn it well and enjoy the following periods when we stay together.

Before entering into the substantial study, it’s necessaryfor us to give a general introduction about this subject. What is English phonetics and phonology? What is it mainly focusing on? How can we learn it well? Is there any standard by which we can evaluate our pronunciation?

Firstly, the related contents in this subject.

It is well agreed that to have correct and fluent pronunciation is thefirst dream English learners may have. Taken for very specific considerations, what elements does good pronunciation contain? What kind of pronunciation deserves to be called good or authentic English?

Correct pronunciation of the individual English sounds is important in the speech, because correctness here may guarantee the recognition of one’s sound. The wrong pronunciation of one letter or one word may well be misleading or confusing to the listener. For example, “goat” is an animal while “girl” is a human. The speaker should distinguish these two words and pronounce distinctly.

The way the sounds are organized is often more crucial for understanding. The rhythm of English, forexample, is one of the two major organizing structures that native speakers rely on to process speech.

Basically, individual sound (phoneme), stress, intonation, rhythm are all indispensable subjects in pronunciation study.

Secondly , in what way can we improve our pronunciation.

If we want to improve our pronunciation, we must know about this field. Then theoretical study is the first step. It is not enough to only know something. We should experience it by imitating, reading aloud, examining tongue positions and lip shapes, repeating unskillful or challengeable intonations or so. The persistence in studying and reflecting on pronunciation related issues is the most important guaranteethat your pronunciation can be greatly improved.

Thirdly, what do we do in our class to ensure your progress?

We teach some basic theoretical stuff. So please listen attentively when I am explaining theory or displaying charts or tables. They are of much importance if I am trying to arouse your attention. We lead you to read and repeat our sound tracks in our class in which you need sense our emphatic points or theoretical keys, which, to your disappointment, may not guarantee your complete comprehension and mastering if no further practice is taken after our class. We encourage you to read widely and do extra experiments or researches on our subject afterwards.

To ensure those learners who are more ambitious than the average can touch deeper ground in this academic cave, some reference books may be listed on our class.

For example, Contemporary College English series’ The Phonetic Course from Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press is the 1st one we want to recommend for your reference. This is also theone we mainly use in our class. We can get in touch with some simple Chinese-version theory and many exact and specific classifications and examples for pronunciation practice. English Pronunciation & Intonation for Communication--- A Course for Chinese EFL Learners by Wang Guizhen from Higher Education Press is another recommendable course book.It’s written in English, so it’s better for English learners reference, esp. in English explanation.

So, my dear friends, are you fully prepared to study this subject with me? Find a mirror because you need constantly look at your mouth shape and tongue positions when you learn to grasp   ;those individual sounds; equip with a recorders or recorder app because you need to record what you read and examine how you perform; find a comfortable corner in your dorms or campus to read aloud because practice is very important. Most importantly, fill your mind with as much as possible curiosity when you confront any problem or difficulty while studying phonetics, because it’s theonly path out when you enter this grand language world.

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