A Study of Taiwanese High School Students’ Production and Perception Performance in English Non-High Front Vowels Author: Wan-chun Tseng Presenter: Shu-ling Hung (Sherry) Advisor: Raung-fu Chung Date: April 18,

Chapter One Introduction Background and Motivation Due to CLT & GEPT, pronunciation is important to build up communicative competence. Take Jason for example. English learners have problems with the production and perception of /æ/ since Mandarin and Southern Min. Mandarin: / ㄟ /, / ㄝ /-- /e/,/ ɛ / in English Southern Min: /e/---/e/ & / ɛ / 2

Purpose of the Study The study is to examine students’ production and perception of the three front vowels. Fledge (1993) points out that production follows from perception. Sheldon &Strange (1982) found that production exceeded perception. Taiwanese students, whose mother tongue is Southern Min, will have a hard time differentiating the English vowel /e/ and /æ/ due to transfer of L1 to Mandarin and English. 3

Research Questions 1. Can the subjects identify the three front vowels /e/, / ɛ / and /æ/? 2. How is the subjects’ performance of their pronunciation of /e/, / ɛ / and /æ/? 3. In what range is the subjects’ performance of production intelligible for English native speakers? 4

Significance of the Study The acoustic data and the results of the study can serve as a guide for English teachers in Taiwan to refer to. 5

Limitations of the Study 1. The subjects are in the third grade from the same school. 2. The subjects have the same English teacher. 3. There are uneven number of male and female subjects. 4. Because the vowels / ɛ, æ/ can not appear in a purely open syllable as can /e/, the stimuli in the phonetic environment of open syllables in the listening task had to be designed equally in the first of the two syllables as a comparison. 6

Contrastive Analysis (CA) Chapter Two Literature Review Contrastive Analysis (CA) Lado (1957) Comparing a language and culture to be learned with the students’ native language and culture can predict and describe in which areas language learners will have difficulties.  similar to L1 → easy  different to L1 → difficult  similar to L2, not the same position → difficult 7

Markedness Eckman (1977)  The Markedness Differential Hypothesis predicts the difficulty of a L2 language learner based on the relative degree of markedness of the native language and the target language.  Less marked phenomena are acquired before the more marked. 8

Comparison of the Similar Vowels in L1 and L2 9

Chapter Three Methodology Subjects Personal background SexMale: 72; Female: 30 Mean age17.32 birthplaceTaipei: 5 Taoyuan: 1 Chiayi: 7 Tainan: 86 Yilan:1 Kaohsiung: 1 Hulian: 1 Mother languageMandarin: 23 Southern Min: 17 English: 1 Mandarin + Southern Min: 60 Hakka: 1 Use of language at homeMandarin: 3 Southern Min: 1 Mandarin + Southern Min: 92 Mandarin+Southern Min+English: 6 10

English learning experience Means years of learning English before senior high school 5.52 Experience of going abroadEnglish-speaking countries (tour): 7 English-speaking countries (residence): 1 Non-English-speaking countries (tour): 32 Non-English-speaking countries (residence): 1 Never going abroad: 74 Familiarity with the KK phonetic symbols Yes: 85 No:17 Practicing speaking English after school Yes: 13 (with friends or family) 35 (by themselves) No: 57 Source of English learningTapes or CD: 15 radio: 6 Radio instructional program: 95 movie or TV: 45 Songs: 53 video or game: 2 Church: 1 Going to a cram schoolYes: 19 No: 82 Tutor: 3 Average English scores for the school term exams 80↑: 1 70↑: 5 60↑: 12 50↑: 26 40↑: 32 30↑: 17 20↑:8 10↑: 1 11

GenderGroupNM MaleHAE LAE FemaleHAE LAE88 The Subjects’ mean scores of English on GSAT 12  The table shows that both males and females in HAE performed much better than those in LAE.

Instruments (1) Questionnaire Part one: Personal background Part two: English learning experiences 13

Instruments (2) Two male English native speakers were invited to record utterances as the speech stimuli for the perception experiment. Three categories 14

Instruments (3) 15

Procedure of Data Collection 16

Data Analysis Perception The program Excel VBA was adopted to produce and S-P table, in which the researcher could examine which sounds were easier to distinguish and which one were the most difficult. Production (1) The two native speakers and one non-native experienced English teachers were invited to listen to the subjects’ recordings together as evaluators’. (2) computer & PRAAT program 17

Chapter Four Results and Discussion The Perception Experiment RQ1: Can the subjects identify the three front vowels /e/, / ɛ / and /æ/? 18

19 FHAE>MLAE MHAE ≒ FLAE

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21 The highest

With regard to the subjects’ performance in perception 1. / ɛ / is the most difficult and /æ/ is the easiest one to perceive. 2. The vowel /e/ in closed syllable with a voiceless consonant is more difficult to perceive. 3. The vowel / ɛ / in closed syllable with a voiced consonant is more difficult to perceive. 4. The vowel /æ/ in open syllable is more difficult to perceive. 5. Those who did better on the written test of English – GSAT- also performed better on the perception task of English. 22

The Production Experiment Evaluators’ Assessment RQ2: How is the subjects’ performance of their pronunciation of /e/, / ɛ / and /æ/? 23

24 Less successful HAE has less difficult

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27 The highest error rates in the smallest task—the wordlist. Tseng’s study: the average error rates of /e/ and / ɛ / go higher as the task gets larger.

With regard to the subjects’ performance in production 1. The vowel /e/ displays the most difficulty in the subjects’ production and the success in pronouncing /æ/. 2. The vowel /e/ in the closed syllable with a voiceless consonant displays more errors. 3. The vowel / ɛ / in the closed syllable with a voiceless consonant displays more errors. 4. The vowel /æ/ in the closed syllable with a voiceless consonant displays more errors. 28

General Intelligible Ranges of Production for Natives RQ3: In what range is the subjects’ performance of production intelligible for English native speakers? 29 The range of intelligibility in vowel length is wide because the length varies with the speed of production.

30  MLAE seemed to fossilize their tongue position more than the other groups when pronouncing these three vowels, fixed to a more raised tongue height.

31 highest lowest  The range intelligibility in tongue advance of /æ/ does not seem to matter that much, but the tongue advancement of /e/ must be anterior to that of / ɛ /. Posterior tongue position Anterior tongue position

With regard to the intelligible ranges of the subjects’ production 1. The length of the vowels / ɛ / and /æ/ can be longer than each other. The length of the vowel /e/ has to be the longest of the three. 2. LAE’s performance of tongue height tended to stay raised, MLAE in particular, fossilizing their tongue position more when pronouncing the three vowels. 3. The tongue advancement of /æ/ does not matter much, while the tongue advancement of /e/ must be anterior to that of / ɛ /. MHAE tended to move tongue more forward when pronouncing the three vowels. The female subjects tended to keep their tongues farther back. 32

General Discussion (1/3) The perception experiment It was speculated in the chapter one that English learners in Taiwan had problems with the production and perception of /æ/. The result turned out opposite. Reasons: 1. The researcher teaches three vowels in class. 2. It is “new” sound for those whose first language is Mandarin or Southern Min. Taiwanese people used Southern Min /e/, so they neglect the difference between the long, tense (/ ㄟ /) and the short (/ ㄝ /) vowels in Mandarin. Their production of English non-high front vowels thus lack discrimination. 33

General Discussion (2/3) The production experiment The result is different from / ɛ / the same phonetic environment of the perception much. The poor perception of it does not seem to affect its production much. The result of the four groups has a lot of devotion to English learning. (e.g. fondness, time, cram school, self-study) 34

General Discussion (3/3) The evaluators’ assessment The word list is examined by the native English speakers with a higher standard of evaluation because there was nothing else before and after the single words to rely on perceiving what the subjects were conveying. 35

Chapter Five Conclusion Pedagogical Implications Instructors have the duty to raise students’ awareness of the sounds they hear. Teachers must highlight that students the position of their tongue. Smaller scopes of production, the significance of accurate articulation can not be ignored. Precise and demanding instructions are important to lay the firm groundwork for good command of English. 36

Suggestions for Further Study 1. While selecting subjects, researchers should take their language instructors into considerations. 2. The design of the list for the listening task is important. It is better to set up the listening experiment in a parallel way to the production experiment. 3. It will be interesting to add / ɑ / to the three in the study. 37

Comments If the researcher did not teach three front vowels before doing the research, the result would be more precise. In the task of sentences and passages, native speakers need to point out the errors that subjects made, but it might be not correct enough. The rate of correct responses to the stimulus T-/bet/x2 is higher than the other three. Likewise, the stimuli T- /pled/x1 and V-/pled/x1 obtained higher rate of correct response than T-/pled/x2 and V-/pled/x2. Additionally, the rate of correct responses to the stimuli V-/dæl ɪ /x1, V- /bæt/x1 and T-/plæd/x1are low in the categories. It is doubted that the major factors to cause the prominent differences. (p.19, 20, 21) 38

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