问答题Read the following article and then do two tasks.
Smoothing the Path from Foreign Lips to American Ears
It is a complaint familiar to millions of alumni of research universities: the master"s or doctoral candidate from overseas, employed as a teaching assistant, whose accent is too thick for undergraduate students to penetrate.
To help solve this problem, increasingly sophisticated software programs have been developed to analyze and
critique speech
. One program, NativeAccent, which became available three years ago, has been adopted by more than 100 universities. Briju Thankachan, an Indian graduate student here in
instructional technology
, has spent hundreds of hours using NativeAccent. The software can
isolate hundreds of pronunciation issues
and even show animations of how to
position parts of the mouth
for each sound.
"Every morning I would hear him repeating
things
over and over into the computer, and you could hear him getting better," said Mr. Thankachan"s wife, Betsy J. Briju, a visiting assistant professor in plant biology.
The comprehension problem is far from solved. Even at an institution like Ohio University, with an unusually
robust remedial program
, undergraduate students say they have run into hard-to-understand teaching assistants.
"You get better at understanding after a while, and they"re willing to talk it over again, but it can be hard," said Karen Martinez, a sophomore from Chicago.
The university"s efforts to address the accent problem date to the 1980s. Every foreign student"s command of spoken English is assessed on arrival, and each year about 300 go through the improvement program, part of the linguistics department. In classes, the students learn to break language into individual sounds, forcing them to be aware of how each part of the mouth is positioned to make a particular
bit
, while instructors contort their faces and touch their tongues to
drive home the point
. Students take sentences apart to learn rhythm, emphasis, pauses and rising and falling pitch—elements that can convey as much information as words.
"Many people come here without having learned
intonation
at all," said Lara Wallace, a lecturer in linguistics. "Everything comes out in a flat monotone, which makes an accent even harder to understand."
Students are assigned to practice in computer labs, using the speech analysis software, and—possibly the most unpopular exercise—recording audio or video of themselves speaking. They have to transcribe those recordings
verbatim
, with every pause,
false start
, repetition or "um" noted.
问答题
Answer the following questions.
What does "critique speech" mean?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】It means to use some soft wares to correct one"s pronunciation.
问答题
What kind of technology is "instructional technology"?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】In education, instructional technology is "the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning." Instructional technology covers the processes and systems of learning and instruction.
问答题
Which two words can be used to replace the two underlined words in "
isolate
hundreds of pronunciation
issues
"?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】"Separate" for "isolate"; "errors" for "issues".
问答题
What does the word "position" mean in "position parts of the mouth"? Which "parts" are involved?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】Here "position" means to recognize the speech organs of mouth. There are many speech organs in mouth. Starting from the front, the upper part of mouth includes the upper lip, the upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate, the soft palate and the uvula. The bottom part of mouth contains the lower tip, the lower teeth, the tongue, and the mandible.
问答题
What does the word "things" refer to?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】The phonetics or words or sentences.
问答题
What kind of program is a "remedial program" and what is meant by "robust." (ibid.)?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】It is a program to correct students" pronunciation. It means this program is very popular and common. There are so many students would join it to correct their pronunciation.
问答题
What does the word "bit" refer to?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】It means a tiny sound of each separated pronunciation of a word.
问答题
What is "intonation"?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】Intonation means the variation of pitch used when speaking.
问答题
Which phrase can be used to replace "verbatim" ?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】Word by word.
问答题
What is a "false start"?
【正确答案】
【答案解析】In sports, a false start is a movement by a participant before (or in some cases after) being signaled or otherwise permitted by the rules to start. Here it means when students are assigned to practice in the computer labs, they would often make errors that they themselves would not realize. That would not be a suitable method to correct their pronunciation.
问答题
Write a short essay in approximately 300 words about the issue of pronunciation and intonation for foreign learners of English.
【正确答案】
【答案解析】Language is a means of communication in everyday life. Common people have little regard the speaking ability as significant as linguists do. They just take it for granted and think that speaking and understanding is as natural as breathing. So many English learners prefer learning "DUMB ENGLISH" to paying attention on studying English pronunciation, the results being that learners are shocked whenever they encounter difficulties in oral communication. Among many other factors, the most prominent is phonetics, which, to a large extent, weakens the learner"s confidence both in speaking and listening. In the case of some senior students at the university, a reasonable accuracy in the pronunciation of individual sounds should certainly have been achieved, however, many students still fail to attain perfection. The Chinese students are comparatively quiet and shy, which works to their disadvantage in speaking. They are afraid of making mistakes. They feel uncomfortable in their first attempt at speech in English and they are afraid of failure, laughter and ridicule. Observations that limited pronunciation skills can undermine learner"s self-confidence, restrict social interaction, and negatively influence estimations of a speaker"s credibility and abilities are not new. The ability of speaking English embodies the correctness of pronunciation and intonation and directly affects the appropriate communication in conversation.
Most researchers agree that the learner"s first language influences the pronunciation of the target language and is a significant factor in accounting for foreign accents. Some Chinese students tend to have difficulty with English sounds because they are deeply influenced by similar Chinese sounds. Learners make mistakes in the stress of words and rhythm of sentences. Unlike many other languages, English requires that one syllable in each word be stressed more than others. The importance of putting the stress on the right syllable in English words cannot be underestimated; putting the stress on the wrong syllable is more likely to make a word unintelligible than mispronouncing one of its sounds. The result can be certainly attributed to the mother tongue interference. For many students whose pronunciations are especially hard to understand, misplaced syllable stress is one of the main problems. Intonation, the rises and falls in tone that make the "tune" of an utterance, is an important aspect of pronunciation of English, often making a difference to meaning or implication. Intonation patterns in English sentences primarily indicate the degree of certainty of an utterance, i.e. whether is a statement, question, or suggestion. Most questions in rising intonation, whereas, Wh-questions (who, what, where, when, why, and how) end with falling intonation. It is important for students to learn these patterns not only in order to communicate meaning, but also in order to avoid unwittingly sounding rude or indecisive. In order to learn English well, the second language learners should pay attention of the importance of the English pronunciation learning. Certainly, there"s a long way for learners of English pronunciation to go.
(参考答案以中国学生学习英语为例,仅供参考,考生可从中选取一些方面作答。考生若从其他角度回答,言之成理即可酌情给分。)