An Experimental Phonetic Study Of Monophthong Perception And Production By EFL Learners In Xi'an Dialect Region

Sound perception and production are part and parcel in the second language acquisition,and the relation between perception and production has been a heated discussion.Domestic researches mainly concentrate on the second language acquisition of Chinese English learners,in terms of acquisition pattern,errors as well as influence factors in the second language acquisition.The influence factors are various but previous studies ignore the complex of language background of subjects.This study analyzes the perception and production of English monophthongs(/a/,/i/,/u/,/A/,/I/,/(?)/,/(?)/,/?/,/(?)/)of English learners from Xi'an dialectal region based on experimental phonetics,with 30 subjects being non-English major students in several universities of Xi'an who have passed College English Test Grand 4.This research aims to figure out the pattern of perception and production of English learners from Xi'an dialectal region in English acquisition.Meanwhile this study will investigate the universality of the theory of Speech Learning Model as well as Perception Assimilation Model for the English acquisition among Chinese learners.The current study aims to figure out the pattern of English phonetics acquisition by English learners from Xi'an dialectal region:the model they present in vowel perception,and the effect on their vowel category of English from that of Chinese;vowel space they form in vowel production under the influence from Xi'an dialect and Mandarin according to acoustic frequency spectrum;correlation between English vowel perception and production for English learners from Xi'an dialectal region.The experimental phonetics study involves perception experiment as well as production experiment.Specifically,the perception experiment contains identification task and discrimination task for totally over 70 minutes for each subject.The production experiment mainly records the word lists of English,Chinese mandarin as well as Xi'an dialect.The data from perception experiment and production experiment will be analyzed for further discussion.The results of perception experiment show that generally English learners from Xi'an dialectal region have good performance in identification and discrimination tasks according to A' scores.They can be sensitive to the three long-short vowel contrasts(/?-A/,/i-i/,/u-u/),but lack sensitivity to these two vowel contrasts(/A-(?)/,/(?)-?).In terms of production experiment,English learners from Xi'an dialectal region present three types:similar English production with that of American speakers(/i/);similar English production in Formant 1 with that of American speakers(/a/,/u/,/(?)/,/?/,/(?)/);dissimilar English production with that of American speakers(/A/,/I/,/(?)/,/(?)/).Obviously,there is distinct consistency between perception and production among English learners from Xi'an dialectal region in this study.That is to say,the best perception and production are reflected in/i/,while the worst perception and production are reflected in/A/and/(?)/.Furthermore,the acquisition of other monophthongs by English learners from Xi'an dialect region presents complexity and diversity.