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2 Literature Review

2.1 Overview on Involved Sound Systems
Received Pronunciation (RP for short) is the name given to the unmarked regionalaccent in British English. This term implies that it is the result of social factors rather thanofficial decision as to what is “standard English”. RP is based on the southeastern Englishpronunciation. Because it is most widely understood and has led to least prejudice of aregional kind, RP is usually used in broadcasting，like BBC, in works on phonetics of BritishEnglish and in foreign language teaching. Many British phoneticians hold the view that thereis no such a kind of English which can be regarded as “standard English，，. But in an Englishstudy, one type of pronunciation is needed to be the basis. Therefore, we have to base such apronunciation system that is comparatively widely-understood and widely-agreed in Britishand other English-speaking areas. Under this circumstance. Received Pronunciation is thebest choice (Finch，2000).In China, since 1949 almost all the most influential English textbooks have been editedby taking RP as the standard (Zhang Fengtong, 1998). In recent years, although GeneralAmerican is becoming popular gradually and some English textbooks adopt not only RP butalso American pronunciation to mark the pronunciation of vocabulary, most of English booksand the recordings of tapes and CD still use the forms of RP and especially the RPpronunciation is taught to our country's EFL learners in phonetics teaching.For all above-mentioned reasons, the description of English pronunciation takes RP asthe basis in the present thesis and RP is also regarded as the standard to all the recordingmaterials used in the research part.In RP vowel system there are 20 vowels, which can be classified into two largecategories: 12 monophthongs (simple / pure vowels) and 8 diphthongs.For English monophthongs, they can be subdivided according to the height of raising ofthe tongue, the part of the tongue raised and the length of the vowel. Table 2.1 presents theclassification of English monophthongs.
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2.2 Theory of Language Transfer
Language transfer has been the center of foreign language research for several decades.:According to Kellerman (1995)，transfer is a type of learning activity by which learners'previously acquired knowledge about the leaning skill will influence the output of their laterlearning behaviors.Odlin (2001) defines transfer briefly and precisely as that it is the influence resultingfrom the similarities and differences between the target language and any other language thathas been previously acquired. He also states that language transfer is a kind of cross-linguisticinfluence.Moreover, Odlin (2001) claims that there are two kinds of language transfers: positiveand negative. According to Odlin (2001), positive transfer is any facilitating effects onacquisition due to the influence of cross-linguistic similarities while negative transfer is theprocess that a divergence between behaviors of the native and non-native speakers of alanguage results in some difficulties and errors during foreign language learning. From thepoint of view of behaviorists, transfer is a consequence of habit for本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。