Deviation Analysis Of Vowel Pronunciation By Some Chinese College Students

Language is a tool for human beings to communicate thoughts.Clear and understandable pronunciation is a prerequisite for successfullinguistic communication. It plays an extremely important role in dailycommunication, and it is also one of the basic elements of the Englishlanguage learning, apart from lexicon and grammar. As vowelpronunciation is the pivot of English pronunciation learning, it is essentialfor one who wants to have a better English pronunciation.This thesis attempts to analyze the twenty vowel productions offirst-year non-English major students from Shanghai Norma Universitywhose native language is Mandarin Chinese. The experimental part isabout these twenty vowel productions. The research has two parts:firstly, the author presents the overall acquisition of English vowelsproduced by Chinese subjects. The overall acquisition can be reflectedby scores conducted by five native speakers. By calculating thesubjects’ correct and incorrect of English vowels, the acquisition rate ofEnglish vowels by Chinese subjects has been gained. The acquisitionrate is presented with classifications of both monophthongs anddiphthongs.Secondly, the acoustic representations of monophthongsare to be reported and discussed by comparing the F1&F2of Englishvowels produced by Chinese subjects with those produced byReceived Pronunciation speakers (RPSs). The results of the research areexpected to provide a guide for language teachers and Englishlearners, and benefit pronunciation teaching effectively.The results indicate that first-year non-English major students agreeon the importance of pronunciation and hope to improve theirpronunciation to a higher level, but their vowel production lacksaccuracy and with obvious Chinese accent. According to the experimental results:1)/??/,/?/and/?/are the three easiest monophthongs to acquireby subjects and/?/,/??/and/?/are the three least acquiredmonophthongs;2)/a?/and/??/are the two most acquired diphthongs by themand/e?/and/??/are the two least acquired diphthongs;3) Acoustic features of English monophthongs by male subjects aremostly similar to RPSs’ as compared with the female subjects.The research is intended to provide some guidance for somestudents to acquire accurate pronunciation through appropriatechanges of tongue height, tongue position, lip-posture and length, andalso hopes to give some enlightenment on vowel deviation analysisfrom acoustic perspectives.