3.4 Procedure 7

3.5 Teaching cases 7

3.5.1 Teaching case 1 7

3.5.2 Teaching case 2 9

3.5.3 Teaching case 3 10

4. Results and Discussions 11

4.1 The results and discussion of research question one 11

4.2 The results and discussion of research question two 12

5. Conclusion 15

5.1 Major findings 15

5.2 Implications 15

5.3 Limitations and further study 16

References 17

1. Introduction

   According to the National English Curriculum for Nine Year Compulsory Education in 2011, Chinese students at primary school are required to reach at the second level in the overall language ability, in perspectives of language skills, language knowledge, affect, learning strategies and cultural awareness, after graduation from primary school. In terms of English pronunciation, students are required to be able to read twenty-six English letters correctly, to discover some simple phonetics patterns, to pay attention to the stress in words, phrases, and sentences, and to understand phenomena of liaison, rhythm, pauses, and intonation etc.

   The importance of pronunciation lies in a variety of aspects. For example, acquiring a standard pronunciation, no matter in American English or British English, helps learners boost confidence in learning English, especially in an early age. And pronunciation is one of the important components of two language skills, listening and speaking. On the contrary, poor pronunciations, with strong accents may cause great difficulty in intelligibility and understanding among face-to-face communication.

   However, due to the fact that English learning in China becomes much more written-examination-oriented both in junior middle schools and senior high schools, the ability of listening and speaking is attached less importance and isolated from other language skills. Thus, the present situation in teaching English pronunciation is generally unsatisfactory. However, just as the New National Curriculums mentioned, the ultimate goal of our English teaching is to develop students’ communicative competences. Therefore, students are asked to integrate all the language skills and teachers should pay more attentions to students’ integrated abilities of English. Finding a new way to integrate all the language skills in English class is quite significant to cater to the requirements of the National English Curriculum for Nine Year Compulsory Education. 

   For many years, music has been used to improve the learning ability of young children. As children are both naturally mental and physical active, they appear to be apt to sing along with songs and accompany with body movements as the songs change tune and rhyme. Meanwhile, songs bring meaningful and interesting context to children.

But can music improve Chinese primary school students’ English pronunciation? ,源Z自+吹冰=文)论(文]网[www.chuibin.com So the research question of this study are (1) What is the effect of music on students’ English pronunciation at primary school in China? and (2) What is the students’ perception of music used in English teaching?

This thesis includes four parts. The literature review introduces the theoretical basis of this study including the knowledge of English pronunciation, and musical intelligence. The research design presents the participants, the method and the main procedures of the author’s experiments. All the details of this experiment can be found in this part. The third part is the results and discussions. The data gathered during the experiment were analyzed and discussed. All the data, graphs and results were clearly listed in this part. The last part is the conclusion part. In this part, major findings and limitation were concluded by the author. Besides, some suggestions for further study were given.