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　　Accurate pronunciation and intonation are the basic quality of a language user. However, there are many problems in Chinese students’ pronunciation of English, resulting from the negative transfer of their mother tongue—Chinese. Examples of errors made by English learners in pronunciation are common, displaying on both segmental and suprasegmental levels.

　　The slight differences between Chinese and English in pronunciation which are not so obvious can easily cause negative transfer. By contrasting the sound systems of the two languages, learners will be clear about the causes of the problems and learn some skills to avoid or tackle these problems.

　　1. Problems in Pronouncing Segmental Phonemes

　　Different languages have different phonemic systems. Still, there exist true linguistic universals and near universals in all languages. An awareness of the differences between the new and the native language can help students realize which of their native language speech habits can be transferred to the new language and which can not.

　　Problems for Chinese students at segmental level can mainly be divided into two kinds:

　　1.1 Problems with Sounds Totally New to Chinese Students

　　Some English sounds do not exist in the Chinese sound system, which leaves a gap between the two language sound systems. Thus it imposes certain limitations on the Chinese students’ English pronunciation learning. As a result, Chinese learners of English are always trying to find a similar sound in Chinese language to substitute for the English sound, which causes deviation:

　　(1)Many Chinese learners ignore the difference between /w/ and /v/. Because in Chinese the distinction between [w] and [v] is not phonemic, i.e. sound substitution of the two sounds cannot cause differences in meaning. As a result, although the students may clearly know the manner of articulation, they still wouldn’t like to make effort to distinguish the two sounds. For example, the phrase ‘very well’ is always wrongly pronounced as /veri vel/ or /weri wel/.

　　(2)/θ/ and / / are sounds which fail to find their Chinese counterparts. Students usually produce /s/ and /z/ because alveolar causes less effort and is easier to pronounce than dental. Much practice is needed for Chinese students to get used to the special way of pronouncing.

　　(3)Vowel length does not cause differences in Chinese. Different tones are used to distinguish sounds of the same quality. For example, mā, má, mǎ, mà represent four different words. In Chinese, since there are tones, the meanings of words can be told easily. Although students are told in English there is difference between short vowel and long vowel, they don’t thoroughly know the way of articulation. In English the short vowels do not need much muscular tension; the tongue should be held loosely. In Chinese there are no such lax and tense pairs, thus they become difficult for Chinese students. Actually few Chinese students can clearly distinguish short vowels from long vowels.

　(4)The pronunciation of the diphthongs in English vowels has an obvious process of glide from one sound to another with certain length and degree, an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。