Hi ALL,

My name is Yi WANG and I am a PhD student at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
My
research area is how to help Chinese learners to cope with natural authentic
English
speech using DIT's speech technologies, i.e. Slow-down algorithm, Speech Corpus
(under
development), etc.

Based on my reading and my own teaching experience, English pronunciation
teaching
involves two levels – the segmental level and the supra-segmental level. Chinese
English
learners, influenced by their mother tongue, seem to have more difficulties at
the supra-
segmental level. Chinese is a tonal language, in which tones are embedded in
each lexical
word and used for distinguishing the lexical meaning, rather than for indicating
speaker
attitude, as is the case with intonation in English. Apart from tonal
properties, there is
another barrier which impedes Chinese learners from achieving a real, natural
connected
English speech production, specifically the `consonant + vowel' syllable
structure, which
provides a clear-cut word boundary.

Given that there is a recognised L1/L2 intonation problem for Chinese EFL
learners, does
anyone have a good source which discusses the difficulties of TEACHING
pronunciation by
either traditional methods or using computers?

I'd be very grateful for any pointers!

Best regards,

Yi