An Experimental Study Of The Acquisition Of English Plosives By Chinese EFL Learners

This thesis reports an experimental study of the acquisition of English plosives by Chinese EFL learners from an acoustic perspective. It uses the contrastive experimental research methodology to compare the major acquisitive and acoustic features of English plosives produced by Chinese EFL learners with those produced by American Native Speaker (NSs). Plosives'VOT and vowel (/(?)/) duration are the main parameters in this study according to different phonetic contexts. The subjects are 60 undergraduate students from Jiangsu University. Their pronunciations of 6 plosive phonemes in different phonetic contexts were recorded and analyzed to answer the following research questions:1. To what extent have Chinese EFL learners acquired the pronunciation of individual English plosive phonemes?2. To what extent have Chinese EFL learners have acquired the pronunciation of English plosives in different phonetic contexts? What kind of plosives is most acquired? What kind of plosives is least acquired?(1) What features do Chinese EFL learners have when they articulate the syllable initial plosives?(2) What features do Chinese EFL learners have when they articulate the syllable medium plosives?(3) What features do Chinese EFL learners have when they articulate the syllable final plosives?The results of data analysis reveal the following major findings:(1) Chinese EFL learners have a satisfactory acquisition of voiceless plosive phonemes, while voiced plosive phonemes could not be acquired perfectly. They are competent in acquiring the English plosives in isolation. (2) In syllable initials,/p/,/k/, and/d/are the three most acquired plosives by Chinese EFL learners,/sp/,/st/,/g/are three least acquired plosives.(3) Chinese EFL learners cannot acquire the articulation of fully voiced plosives to a great extent. In medium positions,/b/,/g/are the two least acquired plosives by Chinese EFL learners.(4) Chinese EFL learners have a poor acquisition of final plosives. Their vowel durations before fortis are nearly the same as that before lenis, and their vowel durations are shorter than that of NSs. One third of Chinese EFL learners still articulate aspirated final plosives with strong energy of burst. Last but not least, most Chinese EFL learners are used to producing an additional schwa/(?)/after the final plosives, either voiceless or voiced.The findings listed above also shed light on EFL phonetic teaching and learning in China. First, a systematical teaching of English phonetics should be covered in college English teaching at the beginning stage of college English learning. At this stage their phonetic competence could be enhanced through a theoretical perspective. Second, knowledge of the distinctions between Chinese and English plosives is another effective way to reconstruct the concept of how to pronounce English plosives correctly in different phonetic contexts in Chinese EFL learners'minds. This is also a challenge for English teachers because they should try their best to broaden their knowledge not only in English phonology and phonetics but also in Chinese ones. Only in this way can Chinese EFL learners'pronunciation of English plosives be improved effectively. Last, a variety of practical means should also be applied to the teaching and learning of English pronunciation, such as computer and analyzing software Praat. They are powerful not only in the presentation of the acoustic features of English segments (such as waveform, spectrogram, striation, duration and so on) but also in the vivid mechanism and procedures of the articulation.