Perception And Production Of English And Mandarin Consonants By Chinese EFL Learners: An Empirical Study

This thesis reports an empirical study of the perception and production of English and Mandarin consonants by Chinese students, which intends to address the following research questions:1. To what extent do Chinese EFL learners perceive and produce Mandarin consonants correctly?2. To what extent do Chinese EFL learners perceive and produce English consonants correctly?3. Does Chinese EFL learners' perception of English consonants correlate with their production of English consonants?4. Does Chinese EFL learners' English consonantal competence correlate with their overall English proficiency?The participants of the present study were 36 native Chinese students(30 of them are female, while 6 are male) who majored in English. All of them were around 21 years old and have learnt English as a second language for over 10 years, and they were also divided into three groups according to their TEM-4 scores. Four experiments were designed to find out answers to the research questions. All the participants were required to have their reading recorded in professional phonetic labs in a Chinese University and a British University. The recorded and digitalized data were then analyzed acoustically by means of Praat 5400 and statistically by means of SPSS 12.0. The results from the data analyse reveal that:Perception and production of Mandarin consonantsThe overall correct perceptual rate of Mandarin consonants is 96.57%, which suggests that Chinese EFL learners are well sensitive and intuitive on the perceptual aspect of Mandarin consonants. Among the five categories of Mandarin consonants, thebest perceived Mandarin consonantal category by Chinese EFL learners is approximant(98.61%), and the worst is nasal(95.37%).The overall correct productive rate of Mandarin consonants is 97.94%, which shows that the Mandarin consonants produced by Chinese EFL learners are generally acceptable and that the Chinese EFL learners' productive competence of Mandarin consonants is higher than their perceptive competence, but the difference is not statistically significant. Besides, the best produced Mandarin consonantal category by Chinese EFL learners is plosive(100%), and the worst is nasal(95.37%).Perception and production of English consonantsThe overall correct perceptual rate of English consonants is 84.28%, which suggests that Chinese EFL learners are sensitive and intuitive on the perceptual aspect of English consonants. Among the five categories of English consonants, the best perceived English consonantal category by Chinese EFL learners is plosive(98.61%), while the worst is fricative(77.60%)The overall correct productive rate of English consonants is 87.89%, which shows that the English consonants produced by Chinese EFL learners are generally acceptable and that the Chinese EFL learners' productive competence of consonants is higher than their perceptive competence, but the difference is not statistically significant. Besides, the best produced English consonantal category by Chinese EFL learners is plosive(96.61%), while the worst one is nasal(79.81%).Correlation between production and perception of English consonantsPearson Analysis and Linear Analysis show that Chinese EFLLs' perception and production of English consonants do not have significant correlation with each other.(r=.178, Sig=0.299, Sig>0.05) That is to say, inconsistency exists between successful perception and successful production of English consonants. Those who can successful perceive all the English consonants are not sure to produce all the consonants simultaneously. Those who are really excellent in producing some of English consonants are likely to make mistakes in perceiving them.Correlation between English consonantal competence with English proficiencyPearson Analysis and Linear Analysis show that Chinese EFLLs' perception and production of English consonants have significant correlation with their English proficiency respectively.(r=.529**,.587**, Sig=.001,.000<0.05) Considering the correlation between Chinese EFLLs' English proficiency and their English consonantal acoustic ability, the correlations are generally not significant in the five consonantal categories.The findings of the present study not only shed light on the theoretical understanding of Mandarin consonants, English consonants, and L2 English consonants, but also provide pedagogical implications on the teaching and learning of Mandarin and English consonants as a second language to the L2 learners with different L1 background in and outside China.