An Acoustic Experimental Study Of The English Monophthong Production By ESL Learners From Baoding,Hebei Province

This research investigates English monophthong production of Baoding ESL learners through an acoustic method.The contrastive analysis between English vowels produced by Baoding ESL learners and by RP native speakers,and the comparison between Baoding dialect system and English phonological system make it feasible to examine the phonetic features of Baoding ESL learners' English monophthong production and the dialect transfer effect on Baoding ESL learners'English vowel productionThrough speech analysis software PRAAT,the first and second formant values of Baoding dialect single finals and English monophthongs produced by 30 Baoding ESL learners(15 males and 15 females)who were born and raised in Baoding,and communicate in Baoding dialect on a daily basis,are extracted.After computation,the data calculated by PRAAT is compared with the data in Deterding's(1997)research of RP native speakers' English monophthong productionResults of the comparative analysis are as follows:the English monophthong production by Baoding ESL learners is not optimistic,with a relatively lower tongue position than that of RP native speakers.And the overall production of female is slightly better than male.Besides,the distribution of English monophthongs/i:/and/i/,/(?)/and/(?)/in the formant charts is very close,but only approximate to long vowel/i:/and short vowel/(?)/,which suggests that the production of these two vowel pairs is under profound influence of learners' mother tongue that they are unable to perceive vowel pairs'differences in articulation and fail to pronounce them in a distinguishing position.Their close position to long vowel/i:/and short vowel/(?)/is also affected by Baoding dialect single final/i/and/o/.The same is true to their production of vowel/ae/and/e/.These findings indicate that it is easier for Baoding ESL learners to achieve native-like position for sounds with similar phonetic features to the dialect,which are consistent with the statements of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis Furthermore,in terms of vowel/i:/,/(?)/,/u:/,/(?)/,their positions are neither similar to the target positions of the closest monophthongs in English phonological system,nor phonetically close to the distribution of any of the allegedly counterparts in Baoding dialect system,suggesting that Baoding ESL learners perceive the acoustic differences between native language and target language,and establish new phonetic categories for these vowels.This finding supports Speech Learning ModelThe outcomes of this research have positive significance for English phonetic teaching in Baoding area.Baoding ESL learners and their teachers should aware the acoustic differences between Baoding dialect system and English phonological system in order to prevent the negative dialect transfer effect on their English pronunciation.