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B. Imitation of Standard Pronunciation.
Some students are willing to open their mouths and speak English very fluently, but usually their speech can not be understood by others, for their pronunciation is poor and obscure. And some students speak English with the local Chinese dialect, for they have been imitating their teacher’s accent.
It is natural that imitation is a basic skill for students to learn languages. As we know, babies imitate their parents’ pronunciation and later they can speak by themselves. But it does not mean that imitation will surely bring them what is considered as the standard pronunciation.
As to students, the final purpose of imitating is to refine their pronunciation so as to speak English freely and confidently. Of course, students can choose the American English or the British English pronunciation if they can pronounce the basic words correctly.
Listening to English tapes and radios are immortal good ways for imitating. Student can not only imitate the correct pronunciation of words or phrases, but also the whole sentences. They should pay more attention to practicing stop consonants and liaisons, etc. For example:
1). That is a right answer. In this sentence, that and is, is and a, right and answer should
be read in liaison.
2). He has a ba(d) col(d) today. In this sentence, the letter "d" can not be read out in a right way according to the rule of incomplete plosion.
C. Retelling in English
Sometimes the teacher can ask students to retell some stories or materials in English to improve their abilities to construct sentences and use their own words for communication. At beginning, it’s acceptable for students to retell what they have read. After they have mastered some basic skills of retelling, they’d better retell something in English after listening to English materials.
It is true that retelling is not equal to reciting. Retelling is a creative activity which requires students to comprehend the original meaning and organize another version with their own words. Retelling is the complicated procedure and students need to do much work than reciting, which concludes more complicated work of reading, comprehending, memorizing, reconstructing and retelling something in their own words.
Some students do not concentrate themselves to read or listen to the teacher in class, for they feel bored with the way of indoctrinating. But retelling can force them to be patient and be careful of some details in English materials.
D. Thinking in English
Chinese- English speaking style is a common problem that puzzles Chinese students. Even if some students can communicate with their partners fluently and sometimes give wonderful performances in class, they still make some serious mistakes in constructing their speech. It is because the style of Chinese translation gives students how to express English with a Chinese style, but not with a real English expression. The following is an example:
Some students like to translate Chinese into English word by word. They translate the Chinese idiom “狐朋狗友” into English as “ fox and dog friends”, But in fact, the expression should be “a gang of scoundrels” in English.
Such a translation sounds very absurd and cannot be understood by lots of Chinese, not to mention foreigners. Therefore, what students should understand is that there are great differences between Chinese and English expression because of the diff