Addressing the Phonetics Dilemma in English Majors: A Psycholinguistic Approach to Teaching and Learning ()
1. Introduction
1.1. Background of the Study
In today’s world, with China actively participating in more and more international events and trades, the demand for professional and highly qualified personnel is increasing, which also provides abundant opportunities and jobs for English majors, including English, translation and interpreting, and business English. Besides, against the backdrop of the intertwining and turbulence between the strategy for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the great changes that have not been seen in the world for a century, the spread of Chinese culture to the outside world is an important path for the world to gain a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of China.
As a result, language is the basic tool for exchanges and communications, while speaking is the most direct way to communicate. Decent foreign language communication skills are essential for effectiveness in communication and development. However, in the school-based curriculum for English majors, several problems still exist in phonetics teaching, such as fewer courses, less time for practice, and one-size-fits-all teaching models. Moreover, the study discusses the different theories on promoting learning motivation in second language learners.
1.2. Significance of the Study
First and foremost, phonetics provides a solid foundation for language learning majors. This study uses interviews and questionnaires to analyze and emphasize that phonetics learning is a guarantee for improving professional competence, enhancing literary literacy, and participating in intercultural communication and international competition.
Secondly, this study examines the impact of the specific age group, namely, the undergraduate age, on second language acquisition from a psycholinguistic perspective and explores the causes of second language acquisition dilemmas in adults, which will facilitate the integration of disciplines and the customization of more relevant strategies and measures.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Studies at Home
The author found that there are mature studies in the field of phonetics teaching under psycholinguistics in China after searching for relevant papers on CNKI. However, there are few studies on the phonetics teaching of university English majors, and most of them find similarities and differences by comparing the language acquisition of children in the lower grades with that of college students or young people in comparative experiments (Mei et al., 2008). It also demonstrates the necessity to focus on the teaching of phonetics in domestic colleges and universities.
Several scholars have studied the learning of English courses for high school and college students and have given various solutions by combining the psychological level of language output disorders (Wang, 2013) and second foreign language acquisition anxiety (Shan, 2006). The foreign language learning anxiety can be measured by the Foreign Language Classroom Learning Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which is already put into practice in some schools (Wang, 2011). All of the above are studies relating to foreign language learning anxiety, and the author also found that many students have language learning anxiety in the research. At present, however, few colleges and universities involve language learning anxiety in the assessment of the quality of phonetics teaching. Teachers seldom use the anxiety scales to assess learning conditions, and there are fewer measures to cope with such language learning anxiety.
Scholars have proposed to improve higher cognitive functions and strengthen the phonetics working memory through music training (Sun & He, 2022). In the follow-up phase, the author also recommend music training as a way to improve the learning environment for memory and relaxing training.
The latest study of Luo (2025) illustrates that the teaching of domestic phonetics requires a clear definition of educational objectives. This means that the core competencies that students are expected to acquire at the end of the program need to be clearly defined to achieve the desired pedagogical outcomes. It also suggests that teachers are expected to design and develop appropriate teaching strategies and assessment, while facilitating the implementation of personalized education as well as hierarchical teaching.
In general, domestic studies in phonetics teaching are comprehensive, and provide insights and greater reference value for this paper.
2.2. Studies Abroad
There are thousands of foreign studies on phonetics teaching, and they are more in favor of psycholinguistic theories and methodologies. The study of Khanh and Tuyen (2024) believed that phonetics teaching lies in both the teacher and the student. Both of them play a vital role in improving the quality of phonetics teaching, supporting it with the optimality theory, which will serve as one of the key theories that contribute to the methodology for teaching and practicing phonetics in this paper.
The study implicated that pronunciations are still problematic to learners who acquire English as a foreign language, such as nasal /m, n, ŋ/ in the final position, and /l/ in the initial and medial position and have applied alphabet drills to aid pronunciation (Dandee & Pornwiriyakit, 2022). Moreover, according to a newly published study by Lin et al. (2025), Mandarin-English bilingual students in Canada produce Mandarin tones of different levels, influenced by factors such as tone complexity, cross-linguistic influences, and speech input. It provides evidence for bilingual speech theories in the suprasegmental features in terms of intonation, tone, and stress. Both studies provide sufficient statements for this article in the interview and questionnaire analysis to conclude that part of the Chinese language learners are heavily influenced by their mother tongue when reading individual phonemes or learning intonations and tones, which is one of the difficulties in teaching progress, but potential solutions are not yet to be found.
2.3. Comment on Previous Studies
Domestic research on the problems of phonetics teaching from a psycholinguistic perspective usually starts from the teaching mode, the phenomenon of language acquisition anxiety and phonetics articulation, whereas foreign research usually explores the psycholinguistic mechanism of speech perception, studies phonetics teaching strategies in different cultural contexts, and is skilled in the use of phonetics measurement scales. Secondly, the experimental research methods are very comprehensive including comparative tests, follow-up experiments, output and interactive hypotheses. As research at the intersection of disciplines becomes increasingly cutting-edge, the volume of domestic literature has grown more rapidly in recent years, and more educators are beginning to focus on the connections behind the mechanisms of phonetics and psychology.
Therefore, the author will combine the English phonetics teaching mode and the psycholinguistic mechanism in domestic universities and use the theory of psycholinguistics to improve the current situations of phonetics teaching and put forward rational proposals to help deal with the existing problems.
3. Theoretical Foundation
3.1. Output Hypothesis
The origins of psycholinguistics can be traced back to the mid-20th century as a result of the intersection of psychology and linguistics. Swain, a Canadian linguist, proposed the output hypothesis, which emphasizes the use of expressive language conditioning to contribute to the occurrence and development of second language learning.
The process of outputting the target language prompts second language learners to consciously recognize the gap between themselves and the target language, triggering a series of attentional behaviors that initiate the psycho-cognitive process of correcting the outputs. The output hypothesis theory can help to detect the theoretical mastery of language learners and thus identify the problems faced by phonetics teaching. The output hypothesis is in line with the current situation of foreign language learning among college students in China, and it can also motivate students to actively participate in cooperative class activities and tasks, which is of positive significance for improving phonetics teaching. Nevertheless, beginners have limited knowledge of the language and find it difficult to identify and correct their mistakes through output, and may even become frustrated by making frequent mistakes. It is time-consuming when testing students’ mastery of pronunciation, and it is difficult for experimental subjects nationwide.
3.2. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Interaction Theory
The concept of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is rather old in psychology. These two types of motivation have to be balanced in the teaching of phonology. Intrinsic motivation indicates that students sustain the engagement without the need for continual direction, while extrinsic motivation describes that the learning desire comes from getting rewards or avoiding punishment (Pan, 2004). A combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can lead to magnificent outcomes. A flipped classroom can stimulate students’ sense of independence in learning and improve learning efficiency. Setting up speech and recitation competitions is expected to promote students’ interest in learning through the mechanism of external rewards, but the over-reliance on extrinsic motivation has limitations, which may lead to the individual’s reliance on rewards and weakening of motivation.
Furthermore, the interactive hypothesis reveals that language is biologically based while emphasizing the importance of the environment. The external environment affects the learning effect of foreign languages, so phonetics teaching is advised to stand on the subjective psychological point of view and create a good atmosphere for teaching and practicing. The theory is highly applicable. The school curriculum can organize classes and activities between learners and foreign teachers. Besides, nowadays quite several applications that can communicate directly with native speakers are accessible to learners. Communicating with native speakers can help learners understand the cultural background and linguistic habits of the target language, and thus broaden their linguistic horizons, but the resources of native speakers may be limited, and a lot of applications on mobile phones need to be paid for. There may be cultural differences or differences in language levels between learners and native speakers, leading to communication barriers.
Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation theory and interaction theory are fundamental to this study. The former can start with the psycho-cognitive aspects of students, utilizing more incentives and increasing the rate of tolerance to alleviate the current problems of stressful learning and language learning anxiety among students in universities and colleges. However, intrinsic motivation is susceptible to external circumstances, such as stress, fatigue, and frustration in the language learning process, and is difficult to maintain over time. The significance of the latter is to advocate a change in the existing model of phonetics teaching and to create a relaxed learning atmosphere for students. The author applied these teleological theories to the research and discussion stages to make the study more professional and convincing.
4. Research Methodology
4.1. Research Purpose
The research aims to study the current existing problems of teaching phonetics courses to English majors, analyze the experimental data, summarize the problems, and finally provide solutions. In detail, undergraduate students have a continual build-up of phonetics awareness and reading skills from primary school through high school, and from the perspective of language majors, they already have a solid foundation in second language acquisition.
As a result, their experimental results are more convincing than just randomly choosing other groups. On top of that, the research includes a series of specific questions with standard answers, ranging from phonetic symbols to intonations. The research not only focuses on the education but also follows the current situation. After searching for the articles and reports on phonetics teaching, there were few about the groups of undergraduates, because most of them are about teenagers or the younger periods.
Therefore, this study may fill the research gaps in the phonetic field and reveal the increasing pressure coming from learning a second language as an English major. For example, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating are the basis of learning a language, while some English majors think their pronunciation is not good enough. Through this experiment, they can know clearly which part of their pronunciation has weaknesses, whether it is spelling, intonation, inaccuracy of parts of speech, or stress problems.
In conclusion, the purpose of the study is to help undergraduate level English as a foreign language major students identify the problems they have with phonetics learning, then to find the drawbacks among the construction in phonetics subject education, and finally to provide solutions that will help to increase their interest and build up the confidence in the process of learning, therefore assisting the country to develop talents.
4.2. Research Subjects
To better fit the research question and experimental purpose of this paper, the author selects English majors from different universities in different cities as experimental subjects. There are 25 students evenly distributed among the three majors, 8 majoring in English, 9 in translation and interpreting, and 8 in business English, including 20 females and 5 males.
They are all sophomores or juniors, with a little more than twice as many juniors as sophomores, so most of them have received the basic phonetics and linguistics tutorials that are part of the curriculum for college English majors. From a professional learning point of view, they are both very focused on their pronunciation and professional improvement, so they spend some time every week on after-school exercises, but the real mastery of these two courses is still to be examined.
4.3. Research Instruments
4.3.1. Interview
To enhance the academic depth of the study and gain more insights into the issues in domestic phonetics teaching of college English majors, the author interviewed a teacher in the School of English in a foreign language institution. She is a teacher who specializes in teaching the subject of English Phonics Tutorials and has a particular wealth of practical experience in what difficulties the students face in the process of learning phonetics. The teacher has her distinctive teaching methods with excellence and the students love to actively participate in her class. The author and the lecturer completed the interview within the scope of phonetics teaching to English majors, ranging from the biggest problem to putting forward some feasible advice in teaching. The interview questions are as follows:
1) What do you think is the biggest problem with teaching phonetics to English majors?
2) What methods do you usually use to improve your students’ phonetics skills?
3) What is your particular approach to teaching difficult aspects of English pronunciation, such as alliteration and weak pronunciation?
4) How do you ensure that every student participates effectively in phonetics practice in class?
5) What advice do you have for teaching phonetics to English majors in China?
4.3.2. Questionnaire
In addition to interviewing a teacher of specialized courses, the author also set up a questionnaire to study the current situation of phonetics teaching in China and posted the questionnaire on social media platforms for language learners in different parts of the country to fill in.
Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient is the most commonly used reliability coefficient to measure the agreement between the scores of each item in the questionnaire. If the coefficient is between 0.6 and 0.7, the reliability is acceptable. The reliability and validity tests of this questionnaire resulted in a value of Cronbach’s. 𝛼 coefficient of 0.669. The questionnaire is a combination of questions that include many aspects of the basic situation, attitudes, and knowledge acquisition. Although there is a lack of some formal data, which results in a not very high value of reliability, the experimental test is still valid.
The approximate time for data collection is between one and two months. This questionnaire mainly focuses on the teaching of phonetics to English majors and covers four dimensions, including students’ basic information and phonetics learning, perception of phonetics learning, classroom behaviors and mastery of phonetics knowledge, phonetics practice habits, and feedback on teaching methods. Through these dimensions, the questionnaire can provide a comprehensive understanding of students’ attitudes, behaviors, and needs in phonetics learning and provide a reference for improving domestic phonetics teaching.
4.4. Research Procedure
The author first identified the research topic of the problems of teaching phonetics to English-related students in domestic universities, and through the conceptual study of psycholinguistics, applied its theories to the testing and solution proposal stages of the study. The authors first interviewed the lecturer who teaches this subject, then set up a questionnaire and posted it on social platforms, inviting students studying English-related majors in various colleges and universities to fill it out, and finally came up with the experimental conclusions.
5. Results and Discussion
5.1. Results and Discussion of the Interview
Before the questionnaire, the author first interviewed a lecturer of English Phonics Tutorial subject with extensive teaching experience.
At present, the biggest problem facing the phonetics teaching of English majors is the interference with students’ native language pronunciation habits. The older the learners are, the more mature their mother tongue development will be. The more mature their mother tongue development is, and thus the greater the influence on second language phonetics learning the greater the impact on second language phonetics learning. There are many differences between Chinese and English in the phonetics system, and students often unconsciously bring the Chinese pronunciation into English, for instance, there is no obvious continuous reading, weak reading, and other phenomena in Chinese, which leads to students’ difficulties in mastering these aspects, and some of the habits of oral muscle movement of Chinese pronunciation are also not conducive to the accuracy of the English pronunciation, for example, the pronunciation of vowels in English needs a fuller mouth opening, which is difficult for many students to achieve.
In improving students’ phonetics level, the teacher usually adopts the methods of imitation and comparison. For example, students are asked to imitate the standard English pronunciation in the BBC phonetic learning videos, and at the same time, video materials of British and American dramas are used in class for students to imitate, and after imitation, they make self-recordings to compare with the original audio and to analyze the differences. At the same time, students are encouraged to carry out group exercises after class, where students listen to and correct each other to promote common progress.
To address the difficulties in English pronunciation such as alliteration and weak reading, the teacher will first give a theoretical explanation so that students can understand the rules of alliteration and weak reading, such as the case of alliteration when consonants are connected with vowels, etc. Then, through example demonstrations, she will let students practice these phenomena. Then highlight these pronunciation phenomena in sentences through example demonstrations, then let students have special practice, and set a large number of sentences containing alliteration and weak pronunciation oriented to the final exam, so that they can drill them repeatedly and ask students to use them deliberately in their daily oral expressions and gradually form pronouncing habits.
To ensure that every student participates effectively in phonics practice, the lecturer will adopt diversified teaching forms in class. For example, she will organize English songs, with male and female students singing in different roles, to stimulate students’ motivation and competition and also ask questions and presentations at random, so that every student is always ready. The teacher also arranges post-course tasks, such as recording and uploading English chapters to the online learning platform, and requires every student to have a clear voice presentation, which will be counted as part of the regular grades in the overall assessment.
The teacher’s suggestion for the voice teaching of domestic English majors is to increase the proportion of practice in the voice course. Not only the practice within the classroom but also extracurricular speech practice activities can be organized, such as English dubbing competitions, English recitation clubs, etc., so that students can exercise their speech in more diversified scenarios. It is necessary to strengthen the systematic nature of phonetics teaching, make long-term phonetics training plans from the beginning of school, gradually improve phonetics skills, and also pay attention to cultivating students’ interest in phonetics learning, to avoid the boring mechanical exercises that make students resistant to them.
5.2. Results and Discussion of the Questionnaire
The questionnaires are in different formats, including correct or incorrect, multiple choice, degree words, course tests, and suggestions. The results of the questionnaire will be used as experimental data to derive a portion of the findings. Next, the author will select the relevant questions from the questionnaire to analyze the issues of phonetics teaching through four aspects, including students’ basic situation, their attitude towards phonetics learning, their knowledge acquisition and after-school practice situation and the total number of subjects in each of the following tables is 25.
First and foremost, from Figure 1 and Figure 2, the basic situation of the experiment is very lucid. The experimental subjects are all sophomores or juniors, most of them have taken one of the two courses of English pronunciation and linguistics courses, and they have the knowledge base, so it is expected that their scores will not be too awful in the subsequent test.
Figure 1. Results on the grade of the subjects.
Figure 2. Results on the course learning procedure of the subjects.
Secondly, the author used four different questions to illustrate the experimental subjects’ attitudes towards phonics learning. From Figure 3 and Figure 4, students have a positive attitude towards attending language classes. They are also very active in learning vocabulary, and their motivation for autonomic learning is reflected in Figure 5. Figure 6 demonstrates that most of them are aware of the influence of the native accent on the pronunciation of a foreign language when learning a second foreign language. However, deliberately imitating the pronunciation of British and American natives can cause language learning anxiety without guidance that it is normal and acceptable for every culture to have its pronunciation habits. The mismatch between learners’ language learning beliefs and the reality of the language learning setting can lead from a level of frustration to feelings of language anxiety in the long term.
Figure 3. Results on the attitude toward pronunciation.
Figure 4. Results on classroom behaviors.
Figure 5. Results on the attitude towards self-directed learning.
Figure 6. Results on the attitude towards accents.
Thirdly, the author used a scoring system to test students’ mastery of pronunciation rules and practical exercises. Each question has a standard answer and the pie chart shows the percentage of the subjects choosing each option. In Figure 7, almost half of the subjects are not clear about the concept of intonation. However, intonation plays a significant role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English and they are frequently utilized in daily communication. When learning a second foreign language, the interference of native language pronunciation habits brings a larger impact than expected. This also reflects that students lack a large quantity of input and output during lessons and after-school practice. If they are exposed to more listening materials and dialogues, they should be sensitive to the concept of intonation, so it is not desirable to teach in a single textbook or concept, not to mention that students are still unclear about the concept of intonation.
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Figure 7. Results of mastery of intonation.
From Figure 8, in the case of spit, the [p] sound is unaspirated, still, nearly one-third of the subjects did not know the principles of aspiration pronunciation in the book, though perhaps they do when they read the word, but they cannot tell the difference between broad and narrow transcriptions, which, language majors should have known about diacritics. It was at variance with the results of the actual examination because there exists a large gap between the students’ levels.
Figure 8. Results of mastery of aspiration.
Figure 9 tested the phonetics features of consonant [f] and more than half did not grasp the basic rules, which implicates the ineffectiveness of the current phonetics courses. For language learners, grasping the features and parts of speech of each sound is a premise for correct pronunciation, because consonants and vowels are known by students who are not English majors, which does not showcase the professional strengths and unparalleled advantages of the English majors. This is also a side note to avoid boring and repeated exercises in the teaching classroom tend to make students resistant to them and the teaching quality remains poor.
Figure 9. Results of mastery of phonetic features.
Moreover, from the point of view of after-class practice shown in Figure 10 and Figure 11, the experimental subjects take their studies seriously and will improve their level in their spare time through various ways, but very few students practice more than three hours a week. The number of courses for language majors is too tight and students do not have enough time to practice after school, which is one of the reasons why the results of this test are not as good as they could be.
Figure 10. Results of practicing times in a week.
Figure 11. Results of phonetics practice ways.
5.3. Strategies and Suggestions
In response to these problems referred to in the interview and questionnaire, the author will give teaching strategies and related advice to colleges and universities, teachers, and students respectively.
5.3.1. Strategies and Suggestions for Colleges and University
Schools can adjust their teaching strategies to cater to the needs of students and adopt a tiered progression of teaching strategies according to their differences, to provide students of different levels with teaching content and methods suitable for them. For instance, they are advised to test the level of English foundation of students when they enter the university. Students are divided into classes of different levels, and then professional orientation in the second year of college.
It is strongly recommended that the school set up more phonetics learning courses in the stage of the first year of basic courses and add more foreign teacher classes to increase the time and opportunity for students to practice in the classroom. In addition, schools could be student-oriented, collaborating with many learning websites and applications available in the market to provide students with a variety of language learning programs and resources to explore their potential for independent learning and broaden their horizons for entering society and beginning their careers. The author proposes to streamline assignments, so they no longer feel overwhelmed and have more time to practice their weak points after class. If possible, investing more funds in building separate practice rooms for students to practice pronunciation, speaking, or interpreting after school is encouraged, considering that students may feel nervous and uncomfortable about doing phonetics exercises in public, which may undermine their self-confidence and reduce the effectiveness of their exercises.
After all, English phonetics teaching in colleges and universities is of great significance for cultivating high-quality English talents. Colleges and universities should pay attention to phonetics teaching, constantly improve teaching methods, create a good phonetics learning environment for students, and help students lay a solid foundation in phonetics for their future development.
5.3.2. Strategies and Suggestions for Phonetics Teaching
Teachers are advised to use more interactive teaching in a class by stimulating the intrinsic motivation among the learners and encouraging students to participate to build up confidence and self-esteem. A multimodal approach to teaching and learning is not just a single teacher-to-student classroom but also a flipped classroom teaching, for example, letting students be the teacher, teaching their classmates the knowledge points from the previous lesson or sharing the new ideas to unleash their potential and teachers can identify drawbacks and shortcomings in their teaching. Teachers can also organize debates or practical activities incorporating the language points of tone and intonation such as dubbing and recitations in the classroom to cultivate students’ interest and reduce the tension and pressure of learning a language. Besides, debates have the effect of promoting students’ critical thinking and enhancing their sense of teamwork.
Moreover, there are a variety of assessment methods, including classroom performance, assignments, and test scores, to comprehensively and objectively evaluate students’ learning outcomes. At the end of a stage of teaching, teachers must evaluate and give feedback on students’ learning promptly, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses and making suggestions for improvement. They can also set up anonymous questionnaires to hear students’ feedback on the teacher’s phonetics teaching and make improvements.
5.3.3. Strategies and Suggestions for Phonetics Learning
Nowadays, a very large number of videos and courses on phonetics learning can be retrieved from social media platforms so that students can study independently after class. The author suggests they communicate more with their teachers and classmates by adopting the Feynman Learning Method to consolidate their knowledge in achieving effective language output results and use the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve memory method to revise the principles.
When feeling stressed about language learning, changing the studying environment by adopting the interactive hypothesis may overcome such anxiety. Scenario-based exercises also fall into the category of changing the learning environment. You can find an empty classroom, turn into the role of a teacher, and present what you have learned on the board as you speak to help consolidate the knowledge. Or find a partner to simulate a hotel check-in scenario and listen to each other’s voices to improve the efficiency of the after-school exercises. Besides, there are many applications on the market for language learners, in which they can connect with foreigners online via videos, and learners can choose free and cost-effective one-on-one communications with native speakers through platforms to improve their language proficiency together. Moreover, they can go for a walk in nature and practice phonetics while walking, sit on a bench to soak up the sunshine, listen to some English songs, or watch some British or American dramas. The purpose of this is not to view learning phonetics as a burden but as a pleasure.
English majors can practice phonetics under the guidance of the output hypothesis. For example, they can adopt the shadow-following training method by playing a piece of English news broadcast while following up the host’s speed, recording their voices, playing it back when it is over, and comparing it with the host’s recording to correct their mistakes and deficiencies in pronunciation, tone, and intonation.
6. Conclusion
6.1. Major Findings
The author is dedicated to finding out the problems faced by university English majors in domestic phonetics teaching, mainly considering that many English majors are caught in the fear of being unemployed upon graduation, that national economic, political, and cultural exchanges are a major craze, and that having a confident linguistic edge can lead to more opportunities in such a competitive employment environment. Through issues of domestic phonics teaching curriculum, classroom teaching, and students’ self-study after class found interviews and questionnaires, the author put forward suggestions for improvement in three aspects, including colleges and universities, teachers’ teaching methods, and students’ learning habits.
6.2. Limitations of the Study and Areas for Future Research
Although the study verified the expectations, the following limitations in the research still existed.
Firstly, the author did not take the language test levels of the study participants into account in the questionnaire, and the capacity of the study participants would have been at rather different levels. Besides, the sample data is small and the scope of the study is wide, if the scope of the study population is narrowed down to the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai regions, the results of the study will be more convincing. Additionally, at present, most of the research on phonetics is conducted in infants and toddlers or at the junior high school level, and there is less research in the area of school-based curricula and language learning suggestions for university English majors, as well as less integration with cross-disciplinary fields such as psycholinguistics.