Peculiarities of foreign pronunciation training considering the native language articulation basis

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of foreign pronunciation training. Extensive coverage is given to the importance of awareness of distinctions between specific articulation traits of the mother tongue and the foreign language. The research aims to prove the necessity of teaching foreigners Ukrainian and Russian on the ground of their native language articulation basis and outline the peculiarities of such training. The author states that contrastive analysis of the articulation basis of the native and foreign languages is the fundamental of nationally-oriented phonetics training. Contrastive analysis is engaged into the analytic-linguistic approach of articulation training. It allows anticipating and forestalling phonetic interferential manifestations as well as arranging exercises for pronunciation training and improving according to difficulties that different languages speakers face. The author takes into consideration the students’ mother tongue articulation basis that allows the lecturer to select training phonetic material and the students to process it in the most effective way and consistency. On the assumption of a long-term firsthand experience of teaching phonetics to foreign students, we offer several specific methods of phonetic work, which are effective for oriental languages speakers. The main purpose of learning Ukrainian and Russian consonantism for the Chinese is to distinguish between voiced and voiceless consonant pairs; for Turkmen and Iranian languages speakers – to tell hard and soft consonants apart; it is also important for all the named languages speakers to learn to articulate groups of consonant sounds.The author offers Russian and Ukrainian phonetic materials and describes the order of articulation training, especially for Chinese, Turkmen and Iranian languages.