A Study On The Intelligibility Of English Pronunciation Of College Students From Jianghuai Dialect Area

The accelerating development of globalization has manifested the unassailable position of English as an international language.Recent decades have witnessed an increasingly growing number of English learners in China,which attracted a number of scholars at home and abroad to measure the intelligibility of Chinese accented English in order to seek factors hampering the intelligibility.However,limited research has taken the diverse and complicated phonetic systems of Chinese dialects into consideration.Although previous studies have found that some salient problems in the English pronunciation of learners from Jianghuai dialect language background,such as the difficulty in distinguishing between/n/and/l/,/n/and/?/,few studies have verified the influence of these pronunciation problems on intelligibility.Based on World Englishes Theory,Speech Learning Model Theory and Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit,the current study explores the intelligibility of English pronunciation produced by Jianghuai dialect speakers for listeners with different language backgrounds and attempts to seek what pronunciation features could result in the loss of listeners’ intelligibility.This study aims to answer the following three research questions:(i)What is the intelligible level of English pronunciation of college students from Jianghuai dialect?(ii)What are the main segmental features affecting the intelligibility of English pronunciation of college students from Jianghuai dialect?(iii)What are the main suprasegmental features affecting the intelligibility of English pronunciation of college students from Jianghuai dialect?To answer these questions,30 speakers with Jianghuai dialect background(JHS)and 45 listeners with different language backgrounds were invited to join in this research.Speakers,non-English major college students in Yangzhou University,were required to respectively read a short passage(about 100 words)and make a short impromptu speech(about two minutes).Listeners included 25 international listeners(IL)from 10 countries in the Outer circle and 20 listeners from China(CL)representing the Expanding circle.All listeners were asked to rate the difficulty in achieving the intelligibility of each recording(1=not difficult at all,9=very difficult)and complete a sentence transcription task.After all listeners completing the two intelligibility tasks,30 listeners were randomly selected and invited to take part in an interview.Segmental features are measured by calculating the frequency and error rate of vowels and consonants in transcription texts,while suprasegmental features are measured by calculating speech rate,pitch range and pause pattern of JHS’ speech.The quantitative data and qualitative data from the tasks and the interview were calculated and analyzed by Praat,SPSS and Excel.The results of this study are shown as follows:(ⅰ)Listeners with different language backgrounds could understand JHS’ English pronunciation to a large extent,but listeners’ L1 and the type of stimuli had an impact on their intelligibility ratings.Both for IL and CL,their intelligibility ratings were between 2 to 3 and correct percentage of transcription was above 70%of JHS’ speech;Results of t-test indicated that CL presented lower difficulty ratings for intelligibility than that of IL in intelligibility rating task,and the descriptive statistics data also showed that CL performed better in transcription task;Impromptu speech extracts were more intelligible for CL than passage reading but it was not significant for IL.(ⅱ)Both vowel problems and consonant problems played a crucial role in hampering intelligibility of JHS’English pronunciation.Vowel problems mainly included vowel quality,confusion of monophthongs and diphthongs,vowel deletions and diphthong simplification.Consonant problems mainly included fricatives,plosives,nasals,deletion and epenthesis of consonants.The results in this study not only confirmed some salient features of JHS’pronunciation in previous studies,such as confusions of/e/-/?/,/d/-/t/,/g/-/k/,/s/-/z/,/n/-/?/,/n/-/l/,etc.,but also verified the influence of these pronunciation problems on intelligibility.(ⅲ)The influence of suprasegmental features on the intelligibility of JHS’ English pronunciation were proved to be different in terms of listeners language backgrounds.Quantitative data showed that IL’intelligibility ratings were mainly influenced by number of silent pauses,overall pitch range and syllable per second and that CL’ intelligibility ratings were mainly influenced by mean length of silent pauses and overall pitch range.Qualitative data further supplemented the importance of speech clarity,fluency,speech rate and intonation for listeners’ comprehension.This study theoretically enriched the World Englishes Theory and provided more evidence for the intelligibility of Chinese accented English,and might practically provide some empirical evidence for the pronunciation teaching in Chinese English class,especially for teachers in Jianghuai dialect regions.