Re: Pronunciation

Why do the Chinese find it difficult to learn English?


You can use English phonemics with characters from the
IPA.  Otherwise you get into a Truspel situation that
creates more confusion than it solves.
Nelson Bank
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I think I should clarify my original post, my position.

It is my opinion that the problems that the students have in college,
when we meet them, are due to the beginning of the English teaching.
Even though there is now English in the schools as early as grade 1,
most of today's college students started English in grade 7, beginning
of Junior High School.

The teaching of English commenced with several weeks of teaching IPA,
before the students knew any English, and then they were told that
this was English.  That is the problem for most students, except those
that Brendan teaches in the top university in Beijing.  They were
totally unable to say any word without knowing the IPA of it and thus
had to learn every single word by memory.

It is for that reason that I started to train Junior High School
teachers so that the children would get a better start.  A good start,
and all the things that we are now discussing, (e.g. business), will
be much less of a problem.

I feel that some correspondents think that what I said would be for
college, but it should be well and truly learned by then.  If it is
then there is no reason to go on with IPA, but it is useless to teach
it at the beginning of the language before the students know the
sounds of the English phonemes.

And if they are in college and still don't know the English phonemes,
then it really is a good idea to teach them so that they don't need to
remember every single word.

Ria
--------------
Ria Smit, Zhengzhou, China
Phone:(0371) 6761 2725
Mobile: 136 7397 4347
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SKYPE: riacalling





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