Production And Perception Of Velarized /L/ By Chinese Learners Of English

The purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic variation of English phoneme /l/ by Chinese learners of English(production experiment),as well as the categorical perception(CP)of the dark /l/ and vowel /?/ contrast(perception experiment ?-?).Production experiment revealed that Chinese speakers tend to produce similar /l/ in both prevocalic and intervocalic positions,while having different realizations of the postvocalic dark /l/.The three perception experiments were carried out in a progressive manner: the first experiment is a simple identification task,the second is an AXB identification task,and the third is a revised AX discrimination task.The studies discovered significant difference among vowel contexts in the CP of dark /l/ and vowel /?/ contrast,in which high vowels stand out.It also testifies that English proficiency does not have significant influence in the CP performance,which implies that the English proficiency testified by examinations cannot be reflected in phonetic level.In introducing two identification tasks,the study also proved the validity of adding reference stimuli in enhancing CP performance;while this improvement only benefits the identification task,hardly benefits discrimination tasks.This study helps fill in the current knowledge gap concerning Chinese L2 learners' difficulty in the identification and discrimination between dark /l/ and /?/.The new discovery contributes to a deeper understanding in the vowel-context effect on CP performance,which benefits the processes of English learning,teaching and testing.