A Study of Intonation of English Sentences of College Students Whose Mother Tongue is Beijing Dialect Taking Interrogative Sentences as Examples

Abstract

During the last decade, college students paid more attention to their intonation of oral English when they need to communicate with foreigners. However, very little research has been focused on the situation of learners with Beijing dialect. The aim of this study was to investigate the negative transfer of Beijing dialect on interrogative sentences in three different contexts while indicating the possible reasons and solutions to the negative transfer. The research objects of this paper were all students with Beijing accent at Capital Normal University. Comparative analysis of data, questionnaire and interview methods were used in the research. Results of the assessment showed that subjects generally consciously emphasized the pitch of the sentence focus, but their intonation fluctuated little on the whole. At the same time, they are not good at using falling and rising intonation to verify the information. Furthermore, they were more inclined to use a rising tone for different types of questions. This suggested that both learners and teachers should pay more attention to training time, language environment and psychological factors during training.