年级起点和小学生英语语音发展的跟踪研究

本研究调查样本包括96名小学三、五年级起点学英语的学生（男54%,女46%）.在第一和第二学年结束时,分别对被试施行相同的朗读测验、单人单次单盒磁带录音.同时,请14名相应年龄段的英语母语儿童朗读了相同的内容并以同样方式录音.然后,将所得206盒录音带匿名编号、随机混合,由8名英语专业的硕士生和本科毕业生以随机顺序各自独立评分.结果表明：第一学年结束时,五年级被试的平均分显著地高于三年级被试.第二学年结束时,五年级起点被试的平均分仍显著地高于三年级起点的被试.本研究表明,小学五、六年级的学生仍然处于英语语音发展的较好阶段,如果学校尚未具备起码的师资条件,就没有必要以语言发展为理由在小学低年级开设英语.

A Longitudinal Study of Starting Grade and Pupils' Development of English Pronunciation

This study sampled 96 students(54% male;46% female) who started to learn English at either Grade 3 or Grade 5.At the end of two successive school years,the subjects were given a read-aloud test and the results were recorded with one person one tape and one time one tape.Meanwhile,fourteen native English-speaking children also took the same test and their utterances were recorded in the same way.All the tapes were randomly mixed and then graded independently by 8 graduate students majored in English.The results show that at the end of the first school-year,the Grade 3 group performed significantly better than the Grade 5 group,and this pattern was kept at the end of the second school-year.This study shows that Grade 5 students are still at a rather good stage of developing English pronunciation;therefore it is not necessary for schools lack of required teachers to provide English course for lower grade students under the excuse of language development.