Teach English in Xiaodongmen Jiedao - Shanghai Shi

Pronunciation Problems facing french speaking studentsOne big problem french-speakers have with many english sounds is the length of the sound: /i:/, /u:/, /æ/, /ai/ (as in I, eye), /eu/ (as in no), /au/ (as in now) are all longer than the similar french sound. This I feel would have to be taught and reinforce to allow students the time to learn the shorter sounds to be able to use the correct pronunciation of the sounds. Another problem facing french students is that french is not a "singing" language. This is partly because there are no stress marks on french words: all syllables are pronounced at the same intensity (volume). Many of the sounds in the french language are ?dumb sounds? or silent; i.e. "an", "in", "un", "on", "eu", "au", "ai", "ouin", "oin", "ion", "eau", etc. Instead of stressed syllables or words, french has rhythmic groups of related words within each sentence causing another pronunciation problem for french students when learning english. A high percentage of french verbs follow a pattern and if it is past tense, generally it will have an accent on the e, french accents modify pronunciation and meaning of words. Unlike the english Language where no accents are present, although still follow a pattern not to the same degree as the french language. Therefore it is highly important to highlighting this and keep reminding the students about forgetting french tenses and concentrate on the english. I believe this to be a very difficult task and will need lots of support and reinforcement. The phonetic differences between english and french speakers are an important problem as may perceive /r/ as /w and have trouble distinguishing between /r/ and /w/. In addition, french speakers have difficulty with /h/ and systematically delete it and they may pronounce vowels as in their language, making the understanding of some words very difficult. french Speakers make many contractions as these are a requirement for the correct flow of the french language. However contractions in the english language are optional and are not essential to understand the words being spoken, therefore it would cause pronunciation problems as the native french speaker would try to make contractions in places that really can?t be made in the english language. The french make vowel sounds using the nasal again this could cause some pronunciation problems and strategies will be needed for students to gain the correct regular vowel sounds to pronounce words in english correctly as we use mouth sounds in contrast to the nasal sounds. The french language also has rules to make the language sound prettier ?euphonics? this is not present in the english language and needs to be a focus for teacher to reinforce and correct making sure the correct pronunciation is found and used. In the french language use, the last syllable of each rhythmic group inside the sentence is pronounced at a higher pitch than the rest of the sentence, while the final rhythmic group's final syllable is pronounced at a lower pitch in the english language. This will have an effect on the stress of the sentence and could lead to a misinterpretation of the sentence. There are other differences between french and english languages that need consideration for example are: Words that look alike don't necessarily mean the same thing. Different uses and spacing when pronouncing words will cause difficulties and with many silent letters in both languages, but not the same letters confusion will happen. Spelling equivalents are another difference as the Patterns differ in the two languages. Finally, Word order is another area where students may have difficulty - Adjectives, adverbs, negation, + pronouns may cause problems.