An Experimental Study Of Negative Transfer On English Phonetic Learning From Native Nasal And Lateral Confusion In Sichuan Dialect

A typical characteristic in Sichuan Dialect of Southwest Mandarin is N and Lconfusion, which exerts some influence on N and L learning in English. Based onTransfer Theory and Comparative Analysis Theory, the author has investigated thephonetic status of English N and L in Sichuan province, and endeavor to solve threequestions: whether there are district differences on English N and L perception andproduction in Sichuan district; what the specific phonetic confusion contexts are;whether there is a relationship between production and perception.All the subjects taking part in the perception and production experiments aregrade-one postgraduates. There are63samples used in the analysis at last, which arefrom eastern, southern, western, central and northern parts of Sichuan province andChengdu city, different majors, and36male and27female. Nobody has theexperiences of phonetic training, whatever English or Chinese.The author calculated and analyzed the data with the help of SPSS and EXCEL.The last result shows that: native N and L confusion in Sichuan district exactly has anegative transfer influence on English N and L learning, and this negative transfer isuniversal in Sichuan province, no district differences (except Chengdu); there is a weakpositive correlation between perception and production.N and L confusion contexts are complicated. In perception, subjects make thefewest mistakes when N and L place in the middle position; subjects feel more difficultto perceive L than N when they place in the initial position of a syllable; both N and Lare the most difficult to perceive among three positions when they place in the finalposition. In production, N pronouncing condition followed by vowels is obviouslybetter than that of L; the pronunciation is a little more difficult when N is followed byfront and back vowels than followed by central ones; L followed by vowels, especiallycentral ones, is influenced more seriously by negative transfer from native language;about consonant clusters, there are no inserting mistakes, but deleting ones, forSichuan English learner.The main findings can be helpful and revelatory to N and L teaching and learning in English.