A Study On Perception And Production Of English Back Vowels By Changchun English Learners

Vowels are an essential part of speech.Therefore,the standard level and proficiency of vowel acquisition directly affect the accuracy of speech acquisition,and also directly affect the effect of language communication.In the past,most of the researches are about the perception or production of English vowels,but there are few empirical studies on the relationship between the perception and production of vowels.In addition,due to China's vast territory and numerous dialects,and the massive difference between Chinese and English phonetics,the speech acquisition of Chinese English learners is hugely susceptible to the influence of dialects.Therefore,this thesis aims to study the perception and production of English back vowels of Changchun English learners,in order to enrich the research of English back vowels and provide some enlightenment for phonetic teaching.This research adopts the method of experimental phonetics and selects 40 students from the Jilin University as research subjects,all of whom are from the Changchun dialectal area.It also explores their perception and production of English back vowels.In this study,five English back vowels are placed in different phonetic contexts,namely,word-initial,word-medial,and word-final.The experimental contents include the perception test and production test.Both of them are carried out in the multimedia voice classroom with a good sound insulation effect.The perception correctness rates of back vowels by Changchun English learners are obtained through perception test,scoring,and Excel data analysis.As for the calculation of the production accuracy,the first step is to record the subjects' pronunciation with Praat.The next step is to use Cool Edit Pro to intercept the audio of related words,apply Praat to annotate the research materials and extract the required acoustic parameters,and then score them.The final data processing and drawing are completed by SPSS and Excel.The research questions of this thesis are as follows:1.What are the features of CcELs' perception of English back vowels?2.What are the features of CcELs' production of English back vowels?3.What are the deviations of CcELs' production of English back vowels?4.What is the correlation between perception and production of English back vowels by CcELs?The results show that the overall correct rate of perception of five English back vowels by CcELs is 74.6%.Among them,vowel /?/ is the best perceived by CcELs and the accuracy rate is 82.5%.Vowel /??/ is the worst perceived,with an accuracy rate of 70.8%.As for the features of production,the total mean of correct production of English back vowels by 40 CcELs is 88.2%.The best produced back vowel is /??/ and the accuracy rate is 94.2%.The production of /?/ is the worst,with an accuracy rate of 80.8%.In addition,when Changchun English learners produce English back vowels,the tongue height can be ranked as follows: /u:/>/?/>/?:/>/?/>/??/,and the tongue advancement can be ordered as below: /??/>/?/>/u:/>/?/>/?:/.In terms of duration,the overall average value of duration of the five English back vowels /??/,/??/,/?/,/u:/,/?/ are 0.250 sec,0.262 sec,0.210 sec,0.270 sec and 0.172 sec respectively.In addition,the pronunciation of English back vowels produced by CcELs is not satisfactory and there are some deviations.Except that the tongue height and advancement of /?/ produced by CcELs is not statistically significant compared with the standard value,the rest of the back vowels are different from the standard pronunciation in terms of tongue advancement and tongue height.Explicitly speaking,CcELs' tongue position of /??/ is more advanced than RPSs'.For the vowel /??/,the tongue height of CcELs is lower than that of RPSs,and the tongue position of CcELs is more advanced than RPSs'.For the vowel /u:/,the tongue is placed in a lower position than RPSs',and the tongue position of CcELs is backer than that of RPSs.In terms of the vowel /?/,the height of CcELs is lower than that of RPSs.As for the duration,when CcELs pronounce short vowels,the duration values are more prolonged than RPSs'.However,when they pronounce long vowels,the duration values are shorter than RPSs'.There are two reasons for this deviation: one is the difference between English monophthongs and Chinese monophthongs,and the other is the influence of dialect.Specifically,Changchun Dialect is negatively transferred to the production of English back vowels.D-/a/ affects the production of E-/??/ in both tongue height and advancement.Besides,the D-/o/ provides great effects on the production of E-/??/,E-/?/,and E-/u:/ in tongue advancement.D-/u/ exerts much influence on the production of five English back vowels.The tongue height of E-/u:/ and E-/?/ is affected by D-/u/ and D-/u/ affects the tongue advancement of five English back vowels.Because there is no difference between long and short vowels in the Changchun dialect,it also causes deviations to some extent.This study also finds that on the whole,there is a strong positive relationship between the perception and production of English back vowels produced by CcELs(r=0.613,sig=0.000<0.05),but the relationship between this perception and production is quite complicated.For the vowel /?/,CcELs' perception is better than their production,while the production of the vowels /??/,/??/,/?/ and /u:/ is better than their perception.The results of this study are of considerable significance to the teaching of second language phonetics.First of all,in the process of English teaching,teachers can use mother tongue transfer reasonably to achieve the purpose of effective teaching.Besides,phonetic teaching should run through the whole process of English teaching.Meanwhile,English teachers should constantly improve their professional level.Finally,teachers should make full use of modern technology to assist in English pronunciation teaching.