Lesson Three

The primary objective of this lesson is to guide students in analyzing corpus data and identifying segmental issues that may arise for Chinese learners of English. This course places a strong emphasis on using corpora as valuable tools to enhance English pronunciation skills, so it is crucial for students to understand the methods and reasons behind utilizing corpora to effectively address their own pronunciation challenges.

By analyzing and identifying pronunciation issues in the corpus data, students can develop sensitivity to the pronunciation issues faced by English speakers who share similar language backgrounds. This, in turn, will motivate them to avoid these issues in their own speech. Furthermore, the process of analyzing authentic speech data from corpora enables learners to acquire the skills needed to use phonetic symbols and transcriptions to describe their own speech features. This lays a solid foundation for analyzing their own speech data in subsequent lessons. Consequently, this lesson holds a pivotal position as one of the key components in this corpus-based course.