Abstract

With the rapid development of economy, the international status of China has raised steadily, with the learning of Chinese boom sweeping the whole world. Chinese is a complicated pictograph language with a long-established history that is used by most population in the world. Chinese truly is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world. There are a great number of homophones and polysemous words in Chinese and also some of the pronunciations are special and demanding for non-native speakers to utter. Chinese, with an emphasis on tone and its musical value, makes it a language of unique charms. But this is just one of the most difficult parts for foreign learners. The main purpose of foreigners to learn Chinese is to facilitate their communication, in more cases the oral communication. Therefore, pronunciation teaching is very important in the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language.

This paper aims to take, as the subjects, those native English speakers who are learning Chinese in China, by making a comparison between English and Chinese in terms of the similarities and differences of the pronunciations of both languages, to find out the obstacles caused by these differences in the learning process of Chinese pronunciation, and to discuss the methods for Chinese pronunciation teaching to help learners overcome these obstacles and difficulties. 

Key words: Characteristics of Chinese and English Pronunciation; Difficulties of in learning Chinese and English pronunciation; Teaching Strategies

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction

1.1Background of the Research.5

1.2Organization of the Paper6

2. A Contrastive Analysis of Chinese Pronunciation and English Pronunciation

2.1 Characteristics of Chinese and English Pronunciation6

2.1.1 Characteristics of Chinese Pronunciation ..6

2.1.2 Characteristics of English Pronunciation .8

2.2 Differences between Chinese and English Pronunciations and Major Difficulties in Learning.9

3. Methods in Chinese Pronunciation Teaching for Native English Speakers

3.1Major Problems with Chinese Pronunciation Teaching.11

3.2Solutions to the Teaching Problems 13

4. Conclusion.15

Bibliography..16

Acknowledgments18