 Student : Joanna Yang  Adviser: Dr. Raung - fu Chung  Date ： 2011/06/10 Southern Taiwan University Department of Applied English

Introduction Introduction  Backgrounds and Motivation  Problems of the Study  Purposes of the Study  Significance of the Study  Research Questions  Literature Review  Method  Procedure  Discussion ？？？

Backgrounds and Motivation  Personal experiences  English is the most significant language in Taiwan  Pronunciation teaching becomes one of the major concerns in teaching

Problems of the Study ？？？  Most schools do not require students to show their English speaking ability  English pronunciation teaching has little observable effect  Teachers do not have enough time to correct students’ pronunciation individually  Some teachers can not provide correct models

Purposes of the Study  To compare English and Mandarin vowels on the basis of acoustic properties  To plot the vowels of L1 and L2 (English is considered as L2)  To investigate to what extent do L2 learners are different from the native (Mandarin and English) in vowels  To identify the L1 interference in L2 acquisition

Significance of the Study  The study will benefit English teachers and students in the realization of difference in language acquisition in general, and in vowel difference in particular.  It is expected that the results would shed some light into the method of teaching as well as the strategy of English learning.  Theoretically, the findings would be important data in supporting the theory of CA.

Discussion ？？？  Does students’ first language inference with their English pronunciation?  To what extent do the L1 vowels differ from L2 vowels in terms of quality (F1 and F2).  Which vowels would be the most difficult for students to acquire?  How much different between L1 and L2 in vowel quality?

Literature Review  Contrastive analysis (CA) provides a systematical analysis of the similarities and differences between the native and foreign language, especially at the acquisition of sound structure.  Error analysis (CA) is a branch of applied linguistics in 1960s, demonstrating that many learners’ errors were not due to their mother tongue but to universal learning strategies

Literature Review  Second language acquisition -sound transfer  Comparison of vowel qualities of English and Mandarin

Method Subjects : 30 Zuoying junior high school students 2 classes - 4 groups class No. 209 – 8 boys, 7 girls class No. 213 – 7 boys, 8 girls

- Questionnaires - reading texts -digital recorder - Praat + Excell and Word

 Subjects : 30 second grade junior students Proceeding : Sent reading text to their teacher before recording about 5 days ago.

 Recruiting subjects  Designing the word lists for students  Recording sounds  Administering the recording  Analyzing the sounds Discussing the findings