An Experimental Study On The Perception And Production Of English Monophthongs By EFL Learners Of Qingdao Dialect

Phonetic learning accounts for a large proportion of second language acquisition,but the teaching of English phonetics,especially vowels,has not received due attention among academia in China for a long time(Luo & Zhang,2002).China is a country of vast areas and large population,and consequently the Chinese language has many regional dialects,which may have varied cross-linguistic influences on the acquisition of English phonetics(Kong,2009;Jiang,2010 a,2010b;Cai & Zhu,2012;Fu,2015;Qi,2014;Liu,2016).Previous studies in this domain,however,have rarely put their focus on northern dialects(and even fewer on Qingdao dialect),and most of them are qualitative research(Zhan,Zhu & He,2012;Zhai & Zhao,2015;Su,2015).Therefore,it is crucial to conduct experimental studies on the cross-linguistic influences of Chinese dialects on the English phonetics in order to find out the exact problems and explore the possible causes,and then formulate customized and effective teaching strategies for English teachers,so as to improve the teaching level on English phonetics in China.In this context,this thesis attempts to conduct an experimental study on the perception and production of English monophthongs by EFL learners of Qingdao dialect,and it is aimed to address the following three research questions:(1)What is the performance of EFL learners of Qingdao dialect on the perception and production of English monophthongs?(2)What cross-linguistic influences do Mandarin Chinese and Qingdao dialect respectively exert on the subjects' acquisition of English monophthongs?(3)What is the relationship between the results of the subjects' performances in assimilation,discrimination,identification and production in the experiments?A total of four experiments were conducted,respectively on the assimilation,discrimination,identification and production of English monophthongs by EFLlearners of Qingdao dialect,in which 36 randomly-selected high school students participated as subjects.The perception experiments(i.e.the first three experiments)were conducted in a multimedia classroom,in which an E-prime script was achieved in computers and then the data were statistically processed by the Excel program.The production experiment was conducted in a professional recording room,in which the sounds were recorded by the Cool Edit Pro software,the annotations were manually made in Praat,and the data were statistically analyzed by SPSS 23.0.Through the experiments,the following findings were achieved:1.As for the subjects' performance of perception and production,by the percentage of assimilated responses and the goodness of fit scale,the assimilation pattern of Qingdao dialect predicted that the perceiving difficulty ranking of English monophthongs would be /i:/ > /u:/ > /?/ > /??/ > /?/ > /?/,/?/ > /?/ > /?:/ > /e/ > /?:/.As for the contrasts,/i:/-/?/,/e/-/?/,/?/-/??/,/?:/-/?/ and /u:/-/?/ would be most difficult to distinguish.The discrimination of the contrasts involving /?:/,i.e./?:/-/?/,/?:/-/??/,/?:/-/?:/,/?:/-/?/,/?:/-/u:/,/?:/-/?/,would be good.The rest of the contrasts would be easy to discriminate too.The assimilation pattern of Mandarin predicted that the perceiving difficulty ranking of English monophthongs would be /i:/ > /?:/ > /u:/ >/??/ > /?/ > /?:/,/?/ > /?/ > /?/ > /e/ > /?/.As for the contrasts,/i:/-/?/,/?/-/??/,/?:/-/?/ and/u:/-/?/ would be most difficult to distinguish.The contrasts that are classified into CG types,i.e./e/-/?:/,/?/-/?/,/?/-/??/,would have a moderate to good discrimination performance.The rest of the contrasts would be easy to discriminate.The discrimination experiment indicates that the vowel contrasts /?:/-/?/,/?/-/??/,/i:/-/?/,/u:/-/?/ and /e/-/?/ are the most difficult contrasts to discriminate.The discriminations of the vowel contrasts /i:/-/u:/(98%)and /?/-/u:/(98%)are easiest,and the discrimination performance of the rest contrasts range from moderate to easy(55%~97%);the easiest same vowel contrast is /?:/-/?:/(90%),while /?/-/?/(75%),/e/-/e/(71%)and /?/-/?/(70%)are comparatively easy to discriminate.The same vowel contrasts /?/-/?/(47%),/?/-/?/(44%),/?:/-/?:/(39%)and /i:/-/i:/(37%)are the most difficult pair to discriminate.The discrimination performance of the rest contrasts ranges from moderate to easy(54%~63%).The identification experiment suggests that identification accuracy ranking is /i:/< /?/ </?/ </?/ </??/,/?/ < /u:/ < /?:/ </e/,/?/ < /?:/;the vowel contrasts /?/-/??/,/u:/-/?/,/i:/-/?/,/e/-/?/ and /?:/-/?/ have the greatest identification confusion.As for contrasts/e/-/?/,/i:/-/e/,/?:/-/?/ and /?/-/?/,learners might confuse them once in a while,but at most times they can discriminate them correctly.As for the rest contrasts,the differences between them are easy to perceive.The production experiment reveals that the overall sequence of production accuracy from the highest to the lowest is /?:/ > /?/,/??/ > /u:/ > /?/ > /i:/ > /?/ > /?/ >/?:/ > /e/ > /?/;the Euclidean Distance sequence is / i:/ > /?:/ > /?/ > /e/ > /??/ > /?/ >/?/ > /u:/ > /?:/ > /?/ > /?/,meaning that the pronunciation of /?/ by EFL learners of Qingdao dialect is most closed to that by Native speakers,while /i:/ is most distant.Also,the durations of all short vowels by the EFL learners of Qingdao dialect are longer than those by the native English speakers,and the durations of all long vowels(except /?:/)by the EFL learners are shorter than those by the Native English speakers.2.As for the cross-linguistic influences of Qingdao dialect and Mandarin on the acquisition of English monophthongs,the study finds that by comparing the predictions of Qingdao dialect assimilation pattern and of Mandarin assimilation pattern with the results of discrimination and identification,and by production performance,the production and perception of English are mainly influenced by Qingdao dialect,while the cross-linguistic influence of Mandarin is not obvious.3.As for the relations between these four experiments,the Pearson correlation calculations show that there is a negative correlation between assimilation and discrimination,a positive correlation between assimilation and identification.a negative correlation between discrimination and identification.By comparing the results of perception and production experiment,the study indicates that they could predict each other's performance,but the predictions are limited to just the data of two ends(the best performance and the worst performance).This paper could have some pedagogical value for teachers from high school in Qingdao areas,for teachers could pay more attention on the English monophthongs and vowel contrasts that students in Qingdao areas may find difficult in learning,which are found by the current study.This method could apply to other areas and other foreign languages too.Pronunciation teaching should be attached more importance to and should be adjusted to different local conditions.The study also has reference value for later studies in that it creatively designs two assimilation experiments to explore the respective cross-linguistic influence of Qingdao dialect and Mandarin on the phonetic acquisition of English monophthongs,which is very rare in previous studies.