A Study of Mother Tongue Interference in Pronunciation of College English Learning in China.

There exists a phenomenon of pronunciation confusion of [n] with [l], which appears among the College English learners who come from the provinces along the Yangzi River regions in China and speak their hometown dialects. And something alike happens to the other dialect speakers from the south of China, who could hardly distinguish [f] from [h], or to the Zhuang dialect speakers who could hardly distinguish the aspirated sounds from the non-aspirated ones. These college students usually unintentionally transfer these confused pronunciation of their hometown dialects to English pronunciation and make pronunciation confusion when they speak and read aloud English, which is called mother tongue interference. What's more, this phenomenon also occurs among some teachers who are from these dialect regions. This paper has discussed and analyzed the causes of these mispronunciations phonologically, and then points out some solutions to help both College English teachers and students to realize and overcome their problems. Also, this paper suggests that: first, some knowledge of phonology is necessary to tell phones apart from phonemes; second, as a College English teacher, he or she should learn something about the phonetic features of the students' dialects so as to predict what mistakes these learners would probably make when speaking and reading English; third, helping learners with their pronunciation correction practice is an essential part of the teacher's job, and use of learning strategies, group activities and self-directed learning or autonomous learning ideas and so on is much helpful to guide the classroom teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]