A STUDY ON THE PRONUNCIATION TEACHING OF /A/ FOR CHINESE THAI LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Abstract

The long and short vowel of /a/ in Thai vowels is the key and difficult points in Thai phonetics teaching, even though the vowels seem to be simple. However, because there is no distinction between long and short vowels in the Pinyin of Chinese, Chinese learners often make pronunciation errors when learning Thai pronunciation due to the negative transfer of their mother tongue. In addition, in the Chinese version of Thai textbook and Thai literature do not mention the duration of long and short vowels, how short the short vowels should be, and how long the long vowels should be. Therefore, this does not really solve the problem that Chinese learners are affected by the negative transfer of their mother tongue and cannot grasp the pronunciation of /a/ in the long and short vowels in Thai vowels. Consequently, this aspect deserves Thai language teachers and learners' attention. To solve this problem, the author uses the "hypothesis method" to guide Chinese learners to perceive the duration of long and short vowels in Thai, and uses the "contrast method" to help Chinese learners better distinguish the semitone of /a/ in the Thai leading consonants and the short vowels of /a/ in the Thai simple vowels. After many times of teaching practice, it is found that these two methods are more effective teaching strategies, which provide effective help for Thai language teachers and learners to a certain extent, and also have a certain impact on improving the accuracy of pronunciation.