A Comparative Study Of The English Vowel Patterns Produced By Northern And Southern Chinese Learners Of English

As an essential part of foreign language learning, vowel acquisition has beenextensively studied at home and abroad. Yet the studies concerning different L1dialectal backgrounds’ influence on Chinese learners’ vowel acquisitions of a foreignlanguage are scarce. This study compares the English vowel patterns produced by theChinese learners with different dialectal backgrounds and that of native speakers aswell. This thesis aims to explore the features, and the general vowel patterns producedby Chinese learners of English with different dialectal backgrounds, namely northernand southern dialectal backgrounds. Besides, it attempts to examine ContrastiveAnalysis Hypothesis (CAH) and Speech Learning Model (SLM). Meanwhile, this studytries to identify to some extent how dialectal backgrounds affect Chinese EFL learners’pronunciation of English vowels. Specifically, this study addresses the following twoquestions:1. What are the English vowel patterns of the Chinese learners from Beijing andShuangfeng?2. What are the similarities and differences between the vowel patterns of theChinese learners of English and that of English native speakers?The participants of this research are32sophomore students from HunanUniversity with the age ranging from19to21years old. They are divided into twogroups according to their dialectal backgrounds, respectively, Beijing dialect andShuangfeng dialect, with16participants (8males,8females) in each g roup. The targetvowels used in this study are/i/,/I/,//,//and//. The stimulus words are peak, deep,keep, did, pick, big, bed, get, beg, back, book, put and took. F1and F2values areobtained from1504tokens.On the basis of the research and analysis, this research has the major findingsbelow:1) The English vowel patterns of the Chinese learners with Beijing or Shuangfengdialectal backgrounds are similar to the general tendency proposed by Ladefoged(2006) and Reetz&Jongman (2009). According to the height and tongue advancement,the production of English vowel pattern of the five target vowels by the two dialectalgroups demonstrates a similar pattern with vowels/i/,//and//at the corners of thevowel space.2) Dialectal backgrounds do have a great impact on Chinese learners’ production of the English vowel patterns. By comparing the English vowel patterns produced bythe two dialectal groups and those of native speakers, it is found that the Beijingdialectal group did perform better in the production of the five target vowels andcompared with the Shuangfeng dialectal group, the participants from the Beijingdialectal group tend to produce the five target vowels in a more native-like way.The findings of this acoustic study are in support of the Contrastive AnalysisHypothesis, as it is found that similar vowels are more native-likely produced thandissimilar vowels. The findings of this study contribute to some ex tent to the effectiveteaching and acquisition of English vowels.