A Praat-Based Study of Phonological Acquisition among Junior High School Students

Abstract

The study investigates the status‑quo of English phonological acquisition among Chinese junior‑high‑school students. Fifty‑six Grade‑8 students from Qihuang Middle School (Huanggang) participated in this experiment. Reading excerpts were drawn from Unit 7 Session B 2b of the PEP Grade‑8 Volume 2 textbook. Speech recordings were captured using Cool Edit Pro 2.1, four‑level corpus annotation was performed in Praat, and quantitative statistical analyses were conducted via Excel. Visual phonetic analyses were implemented across four dimensions: word stress, sentence stress, rising‑falling intonation, and pronunciation accuracy. Results reveal notable phonological biases concerning tone‑group segmentation, stress placement, and intonation patterns. Such deviations primarily stem from L1 negative transfer, constrained pedagogical approaches, and insufficient corrective feedback. Accordingly, this paper proposes pedagogical interventions underpinned by speech‑visualization techniques. The findings offer empirical evidence and practical implications for refining junior‑high‑school English phonetics instruction, particularly for teaching adapted to computer‑scored man‑machine dialogue assessments.