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Pronunciation Teaching Case Study

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1. Introduction The global position of English is nowadays unassailable due to a range of historical, political and economic reasons, resulting in increasing enthusiasms for researching in the ELT field. Among all the issues identified, ‘which model?’ is one of them that have been considered controversial, especially in pronunciation teaching. Back to the last century, Stern (1983) has already started the debate by raising the question ‘should the class be taught American English or British English?’. (as cited in He, 2004) The accents of the two varieties mentioned here, the British accent (RP) and the American accent (GA) are abidingly considered as the orthodoxies for providing norms in pronunciation teaching. (Brown, 1992) Focusing on the specific context of ELT in China, the Chinese government has made English a compulsory taught subject in primary schools from …show more content…
What accents are normally considered as the modeling pronunciation among Chinese EFL learners? Which one is preferred, the British accent or the American accent? ii. What factors affect learners’ language ideologies in choosing so? iii. Is there any corelationship between learners’ attitudes towards those pronunciation models and their attitudes towards the Chinese English accent?
Two testable hypotheses are proposed for the first two research questions, with the first one based on He’s (2004) attitude study in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and the second one based on similar research conducted in Czech by Benková (2013).
i. RP and GA are still considered as the English modeling pronunciation in China, and Chinese EFL learners are more inclined to learn the British accent. ii. Possible factors might be (1) the influence from schools and teachers, (2) learners’ contact with English (studying abroad experiences and chances to use English), (3) the influence of the mass media like music, movies, or TV

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