Effects Of Intensive Language Exposure On Chinese Students' Production Of American Tense /i/ And Lax /I/

This study intends to investigate how intensive English exposure to American native speakers help to develop Chinese students'production of American tense/lax vowel /i/-/I/ more native-like. Based on Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis and Speech Learning Model and previous vowel studies, we put forward two research questions: 1) Do Chinese students produce American tense/lax vowel /i/-/I/ implement the same acoustic cues as American native speakers? If not, how do they differ from American native speakers to produce American tense/lax vowel /i/-/I/? 2) Can intensive English exposure help Chinese students develop to produce American tense/lax vowel /i/-/I/ more native-like?Two experiments were designed in this study to assess the accuracy of the vowel contrast /i/-/I/ produced by each group, namely production task and intelligibility test.The production task reveals that American native speakers differ significantly from Chinese students in producing American tense/lax vowel /i/-/I/ both spectrally and temporally. American subjects'productions of /i/ and /I/ displayed a regularity both in vowel height and backness when their productions of /i/-/I/ plotted in vowel chart. While Chinese speakers'production of this vowel contrast was not so regular with a lot of overlaps in vowel space, and Chinese learners tend to overuse duration to discriminate /i/ form /I/ which resulted an exaggerated duration difference between /i/ and /I/. Chinese students with intensive English exposure also significantly differ from Mandarin subjects without intensive English exposure, they use less the durational cue but produced more spectral differences between /i/ and /i/.The scores of intelligibility test showed that native speakers'vowels were identified virtually nearly every instance; the vowels of the subjects with intensive language exposure were identified more correctly than those of the subjects without intensive language exposure. The results obtained in intelligibility test were conformed to the acoustic analysis of productions of /i/ and /I/.Therefore, we can make a conclusion that intensive English exposure can help Chinese subjects produce the vowel contrast /i/-/I/ more native-like.