The Perception And Production Of English Approximants By Chinese EFL Learners: An Experimental Study

The consonant system in English, as an important and determining feature of thephonological system, deserves efforts to study and compare in the field of secondlanguage acquisition (SLA). This thesis reports an experimental study of theperceptual and productive acquisition of English approximants by Chinese EFLlearners, and the relationship between their perception and production so as togenerate theoretical and pedagogical implications for the instruction of Englishphonetics and phonology in China. Mainly, the present study intends to address thefollowing research questions:1. To what extent do Chinese EFL learners perceive English approximantscorrectly?2. To what extent do Chinese EFL learners produce English approximantscorrectly?3. What are the most and least acquired approximants, perceptually andproductively?4. To what extent does the subjects’ perception of English approximants correlatewith their production?The subjects in this study were81Chinese EFL learners in the perception testand85Chinese EFL learners in the production test. The treatments for both theperception test and the production test were the four English approximants in differentphonetic contexts. i.e. in the word initial, word medial and word final positions. Thedata were collected in the phonetics laboratory in Jiangsu University of Science andTechnology (JUST), and then analyzed acoustically by means of Praat, awell-acknowledged software in the world phonetics field and statistically by means ofSPSS software so as to examine the possible situation of perception and productionand highlight the phonetic and phonological instruction in China.The results from the two experiments reveal that：1). Most of the Chinese EFL learners had little or no troubles in perceiving theEnglish approximants with the correct acquisition rate of93.84%. This may largely be due to the fact that great phonological similarities are shared by both Chinese and English Approximants.2). The accurate production rate for all the four approximants is45.4%. The overall accurate production rate indicates that the subjects’production performance significantly differs from their perception performance. It was found that the subjects’ production of English approximants is really close to Chinese approximants rather than the English ones.3). The best perceived English approximant of all four in different phonetic contexts is the clear τ□in the medium position accounting for one hundred percent, and the clear□τ□in the initial position follows and accounts for97.5%. The best produced English approximant is/j/in the initial position with the correct acquisition rate of56.9%, whereas the least produced approximant is/w/in the initial position with the correct acquisition rate of29.4%.4).The average correct perceptual acquisition rate of English approximants is93.84%while the average correct productive acquisition rate of English approximants is45.4%. Pearson correlation analysis reveals there is no significant correlation between the subjects’perceptual acquisition and productive acquisition of English approximants (r=0.120, p=0.288, p>0.05). This demonstrates Chinese EFL learners’ perceptual competence of English approximants is far more advanced than their productive competence, partially indicating their overall incompetence of English segments and unfavorable oral competence.These findings shed light upon phonetic learning and teaching for EFL learners in China. The proper perception and production of English phonemes are of great importance in improving their interlanguage phonological competence and helping them avoid the negative transfer of their L1. First and foremost, learners should be equipped with explicit knowledge of English phonology and phonetics so as to master the interlanguage phonological inventory. Second, the comparison and contrast of English and Chinese phonetics should also be highlighted in the EFL classroom in China so that EFL learners are aware of the similarities and differences between their L1and L2phonological system. Based on this contrastive knowledge, they are able toknow how to get rid of their common errors in pronunciation. Lastly, someinternationally acknowledged phonetic softwares such as Praat are powerful for EFLteachers to visualize the phonetic features of the correct and wrong pronunciation ofL2segments. This obviously facilitates EFL phonetics teaching and learning in China.