85% of students pronounce "Southern" wrong
Source: sun
Translated by cici@AsianEU

Reading "comb" to "come", "estate" to "S day"(S地), is common error in the people of Hong Kong English pronunciation. A survey investigated 500 primary and middle school students, selecting five common day-to-day English words correct pronounciation from recording. As a whole, about twenty percent of students answer correctly, of which only about 15 percent of people give the correct answer to the word "Southern".

Organizers pointed out that formal education ignored the International Phonetic Alphabet, and students will only remember the pronunciation like a parrot trying to remember pronounciation in repetition. As a result, students pronounce "southern" into "Sau Fun"( 收墳).

An English training institution interviews 500 Primary students from fourth grade to 9th grade letting them to choose from five options of the correct pronounciation of words "comb", "exit", "southern", "society" and "estate" from the recording. It was found that only 25 percent knew the correct pronunciation of "comb", and thirty percent misread "comb" into "come". Many people have misplaced accent, such as "estate" accent in Section II, but students places accent in the first section turning pronounciation into a "S day"(S地).

9th grade student Tsang Sze-Kei has started learning pronounciation in summer vacation. She says school doesn't teach phonetic, so she can't distinguish the pronounciation between "bad" and "bed" in the past. Phonetic let her understand the pronunciation of principle.

This post has been edited by cici: Oct 14 2008, 04:26 AM