Abstract

Pronunciation emerged as a field of systematic study towards the end of the 19th century when International Phonetic Association was established in 1886. From 1940’s to 1960’s, pronunciation teaching was of primary importance in the English Language Teaching Curriculum (Atli et al, 2012). It can be found in the amount of research that pronunciation is neglected in the majority of language classrooms. Out of different reasons, English teaching practitioners avoid dealing with pronunciation skills. 

English picture book reading is one of the popular methods developed in recent years to cultivate children’s reading ability based on the picture books. Some picture books share the same character--- rhymes, which are memorable and suitable to chant because of their simplicity, strong cadence and rhythm as well as their humor.

 English is a tone-oriented language with stress and pitch throughout the entire sentence. The rhythm of English is known as the prosody of pronunciation, including intonation, stress, pause etc. English rhythm constitutes an important aspect of the pronunciation teaching, which reflects the most characteristic of English pronunciation. Thus it is called the soul of English phonetics. 

And English as a language which can not only be read, but also be rhymed. The current study based on the picture book singing aims to investigate the development of children pronunciation compared with traditional ways of reading picture books by making experiments and questionnaires in order to give some useful suggestion for the English pronunciation teaching frontiers. Based on the study, it is emergent to improve the recognition of characteristics of English rhythm, the status of English rhythm in phonetic teaching, change the traditional teaching mode and transfer the focus of the phonetic teaching to the English rhythm characteristics.

The author found that picture book rhyme reading has great effect on the development of the stress and pause of pupils’ pronunciation, and it shows obviously the enhancement in their interest in learning English. Some suggestions, for example, the organizer should pay attention to the participants and create a non-threating atmosphere for students to open their mouth and rhyme it out can be applied in teaching. Suggestion details are listed in major findings. 

Key words: English picture book, rhyme, English pronunciation.

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1.-Introduction-1

1.1 Research purpose and research significance-1

2. Literature review-3

2.1 Pronunciation awareness-3

2.1.1 The concept of phonological awareness-3

2.2.2 Studies on phonological awareness-3

2.2 English Picture books and English learning-3

2.2.1 The definition of English picture book-3

2.2.2 Studies on English picture book reading and English learning-4

2.3 Rhymes and pronunciation-4

2.3.1 The definition of rhyme-4

2.3.2 The development of rhyme-5

2.3.3 Characteristics and functions of rhymes-6

2.3.4 Rhymes and pronunciation-7

3. Research Method-10

3.1 Research purpose and Research Questions-10

3.2 Participants-10

3.3 Materials-10

3.4 Research Tools-13

3.5 Research Procedure-14

3.5.1 Direct observation-15

3.5.2 Research purpose-15

3.5.3 Research subject-15

3.5.4 Research procedure-15

4. Results and discussion-17

4.1 Results and discussion of research question 1-17

4.1.1 The pre-test-17

4.1.2 The comparison of pre-test and post-test-17

4.2 Results and discussion of research question 2-20

4.2.1 The attitudes of students to picture book rhyme reading-20

4.2.2 The difficulties and suggestions-20

4.3 Suggestions on solving the problems-21

5. Conclusion and Limitation-22

5.1 Major Findings-22

5.2 Limitations-22

References