An Experimental Study Of English Monophthongs Produced By The College Students From Tongtai Dialect District

Monophthongs,as the basic segments of any language,play a vital role in language learning.Due to the distinctive segmental characteristics of Chinese and English languages,Chinese EFL learners are often found hindered by their mother tongues including local dialects and Mandarin when they produce utterances in L2 English.However,there’s very sparse number of empirical studies focusing on the effects of local dialect on L2 English pronunciation and that not much is known systematically on how EFL learners’ local dialect affects their L2 pronunciation.Based on this theoretical and practical need,this empirical research aims to explore the overall correct production rate and acoustic qualities of English monophthongs produced by the subjects from Tongtai dialect district and the possible reasons for their phonetic errors from the perspectives of their L1 Mandarin and local Tongtai dialect.Specifically,it intends to address the following research questions:1)To what extent can college EFL learners from Tongtai dialect district produce English RP monophthongs correctly?2)What are the acoustic features of English monophthongs produced by college EFL learners from Tongtai dialect district?3)What are the typical errors in the production of English monophthongs by college EFL learners from Tongtai dialect district?The subjects of this study consist of two parts,30 college EFL learners in Yangzhou University,whose mother tongue is Tongtai dialect,and two native RP speakers,English phoneticians from the University of Cambridge,UK.The treatment for the phonetic experiment was 12 British monophthongs embedded in 12 carrier words regularly used in the international phonetic domain.The 12 monophthongs were then embedded in the carrier sentence"Speak_twice",an internationally well-accepted carrier sentence for the research into vowels.The data of EFL subjects’ production of target monophthongs were recorded in Yangzhou University Laboratory of Phonetics,Hearing and Cognitive Science;and the comparative native English data of native RP speakers’ production were recorded in Phonetics Laboratory in University of Cambridge.Then all the recorded data were annotated and analyzed acoustically via Praat software and statistically via Excel 2010 and SPSS 20.0.The results of the data analysis reveal the following findings:Firstly,the overall correct production rate(CPR)of 12 monophthongs is 68%.Among all the monophthongs,the CPR of central vowels is 78%which is the highest,and then that of the front vowels is 67%,and that of back vowels is 59%,indicating the CPR hierarchy from central to front and finally to back monophthongs.And the CPRs of all monophthongs in word medial and word finals are 71%while in word initial is 70%,demonstrating the effect of phonetic contexts on the CPRs of L2 English monophthongs produced by the subjects.The CPRs of individual front monophthongs/e/,/i:/,/i/,/(?)/are 76%,69%,69%and 55%respectively.When front monophthongs are located in word final,the CPR is 76%,the highest,whereas in word initials,the CPR is 64%,is the worst.When it comes to central vowels,the CPRs of/(?)/,/(?):/,/∧/are 87%,74%and 72%respectively.When central English monophthongs occur in word initial and medial,their CPRs are 82%,when they are in world final,the CPR is 68%.About the back vowels,the CPR of/a:/is the highest while that of/u/is the lowest(33%).CPRs of/(?):/,/u:/,/(?)/are 69%,65%and 51%respectively.And the CPR of back vowels in word initial is 69%,the highest,whereas in word medial,the CPR is 63%,the worst.Among all 12 monophthongs,the CPRs of/(?)/,/a:/,/e/are above 75%which can be seen as the top three best produced monophthongs as their CPRs reach 87%,79%and 76%respectively.On the other hand,/u/,/(?)/and/ae/are found to be the bottom three produced monophthongs with their CPRs are 33%,51%and 55%which are all less than 60%.Secondly,as for the acoustic features of L2 English monophthongs produced by college students from Tongtai dialect,FI,F2 and duration values were measured,which correspond to the tongue height,tongue frontness-backness and length of monophthong productions.In respect of tongue height,as the higher F1 value is,the lower tongue position is.The tongue positions of/i:/,/ae/(front monophthongs),/∧/,/(?)/,/(?):/(central monophthongs),/a:/,/(?):/,/u:/,/u/(back monophthongs)produced by male EFLLs are lower than those pronounced by male RP speaker.Because F1 values of these 9 monophthongs produced by male subjects are higher than those pronounced by male RP speaker.Male subjects tended to raise their tongue higher when produce/r/(front monophthong),/e/(central monophthong),/(?)/(back monophthongs)for F1 values of these monophthongs are smaller than male RP speaker’s.While female subjects tended to produce/i:/(front monophthongs),/(?)/(central monophthong),/a:/,/u:/,/(?):/(back monophthongs)with a lower tongue height than female RP speaker because the higher F1 values.And tongue height of/i/,/e/,/(?)/(front monophthongs),/∧/,/ε:/(central monophthong),/p/,/u/(back monophthongs)produced by female subjects are higher than those produced by female RP speaker for the lower F1 values.In respect of tongue frontness-backness,as the higher F2 value is,the fronter the tongue is.The tongue positions of/i:/,/r/,/e/,/ae/(front monophthongs),/∧/,/(?):/(central monophthongs),/a:/,/(?):/,/(?)/(back monophthongs)produced by male subjects are fronter than those produced by male RP speaker because F2 values of these monophthongs pronounced by male subjects are higher than those produced by male RP speaker.While tongue positions of/(?)/(central monophthongs)and/u:/,/u/(back monophthong)produced by male subjects are backer than those pronounced by male RP speaker./i:/,/r/,/e/,/(?)/(front monophthongs),/a:/,/(?)/(back monophthongs)produced by female subjects are fronter than those produced by female RP speaker for the higher F2 values,while/∧/,/(?):/,/(?)/(central monophthongs),/u/,/u:/,/(?):/(back monophthongs)are pronounced backer.In respect of time length,long monophthongs/i:/,/3:/,/a:/and/u:/produced by male subject are generally shorter than those produced by male RP speaker while/(?):/and short monophthongs/r/,/e/,/ae/,/∧/,/(?)/,/u/and/(?)/are longer.As for female subjects’production,/i/,/e/,/∧/,/(?)/,/(?):/,/(?)/,/(?)/tend to be lengthened while/i:/,/(?)/,/(?):/,/(?):/,/u:/are shorten by female subjects.As for the influence of mother tongues on the L2 English monophthong production,the acoustic features of similar monophthongs of L2 English,Mandarin and Tongtai dialect were carefully compared and contrasted.The result presents that male EFL subjects’ production of English/i:/,/r/is slightly influenced by/(?)/and/i/in Mandarin and in Tongtai dialect while female subjects’ production of English/i:/,/r/is influenced by/(?)/and/i/in Mandarin and Tongtai dialect except for F1 value of/(?)/and duration value of/i/in Tongtai dialect.English monophthong/e/produced by male EFL learners is obviously influenced by/ε/in Tongtai dialect.But female subjects is not influenced by/ε/in Tongtai dialect.English/ae/produced by both male and female EFL learners are significantly influenced by/a/in Mandarin and/a/in Tongtai dialect.English/∧/produced by male EFL learners is influenced by Mandarin and Tongtai dialect.While when/∧/is produced by female EFL learners,it is influenced by/a/in Tongtai dialect in F1,Qualities of/γ/in Mandarin has impact on the male and female subjects’production of English/(?)/and/(?):/.For male subjects and female subjects,their production of English/a:/is not influenced by Tongtai dialect/a/and Mandarin/a/.For male subjects,/(?)/in Tongtai dialect exert influence on the pronunciation of English/(?):/and/(?)/.And English/(?):/,/(?)/produced by female subjects are influenced by/o/in Tongtai dialect and/o/in Mandarin.English/u:/,/(?)/produced by male and female subjects are influenced by/u/,/y/in their mother tongues.The above findings provide a fairly complicated picture of the strong effects of Mandarin and Tongtai dialect on some English monophthongs produced by the EFL subjects.Thirdly,as for the typical errors of English monophthongs produced by EFLLs from Tongtai dialect,there are two main error categories:complete wrong replacement and deviated pronunciation.And the first four worst production errors are:(1)Qualities of/u/,/y/in Mandarin and Tongtai dialect have impact on the production of English/u:/and/(?)/.They exert negative influence not only on tongue position but also on duration.(2)/(?)/in Tongtai dialect also has negative impact on the accurate production of English/(?)/,/(?):/.(3)Because there is no similar counterpart of/ae/in Tongtai dialect and Mandarin,EFL learners tend to produce an interlingual segment which approaches the quality of/ae/.(4)/(?)/,/i/in Tongtai dialect and Mandarin influence the CPR of English/i:/,/I/.All these typical errors may be caused by mother tongues’negative transfer or by EFL learners’ unsuccessful input or noticing.Compared to relevant studies in China,this present study has made the following achievements:First,it is the first study focusing on the effects of Tongtai dialect on the production of L2 English monophthongs.Its findings will shed light on the relevant studies in the future.Second,it adopted a phonetic experimental design and a phonological plus impressionist comprehensive approach to explore the overall correct production rate and acoustic qualities of English monophthongs produced by subjects from Tongtai dialect district and the possible reasons for their phonetic errors from the perspectives of their L1 Mandarin and local Tongtai dialect.As a result,the findings of the present study provide more detailed probe into the issue of local dialect influence in L2 English vowel pronunciation by Chinse EFL learners.The errors of monophthongs produced by college students from Tongtai dialect district should not be neglected,for the CPR is far from satisfying.And the findings of this study explain the pronunciation teaching and learning in China.Teachers should pay attention to the reasons of pronunciation errors and illustrate the places of articulation and manners of articulation in class.Praat can be adopted by teachers to clearly visualize the sound so that to improve teaching quality.And students should grasp the differences and similarities between English and mother tongues and keep improving phonetic proficiency.