1. Chinese Learners’ Perception and Production of the vowels: /e/, /ei/, /o/, & /ou/ in English by Contrastive Analysis 研究生 : 張悅寧 報告人 : NA2C0003 傅學琳 WHO WHAT HOW

2. Motivation The sound patterns of L1 are affecting their ability to pronounce English. The pronunciation errors made by L2 learners are reflections of the pronunciation system of their native language.

3. Motivation Learners are confused the tense vowels with the lax vowels. lax tense ㄝ ~ / e / vs. ㄟ ~ / ei / ㄛ ~ / o / vs. ㄡ ~ / ou /

4. Motivation Related studies 1. Teng (2002) : examined only the English production part of lax and tense vowels. 2. Chen (1999) : both perception and production, but examined consonants, vowels, intonation, and stress in general.

5. Purpose 1.To compare the articulation of one with the other in each pair of similar vowels in Mandarin /ei; e/, /ou; o/ and English /ei; e/, /ou; o/. 2.To investigate whether or not the pronunciation of L1 interferes / helps the pronunciation of L2.

6. Purpose 3.To find out people who speak Southern Min have more difficulty speaking English and thus make more mistakes than people who speak Mandarin when distinguishing English vowels /ei; e/ and /ou; o/, as there are no /ei/ and /ou/ sounds in Southern Min.

7. Purpose 4.To know if perception and production are interrelated since the phenomenon of speaking English incorrectly might not just be a production issue. It might depend on the learner’s ability to perceive the pairs of sounds in the second language.

8. Purpose 5.To know if it is easier for Chinese students to distinguish the vowels /ei/ and /ou/ (/e/ and /o/) in English because they are more similar to /ei/ and /ou/ in Mandarin.

9. Research Questions RQ1. Does the pronunciation of vowels in a native language interfere or help the pronunciation of vowels in second language? RQ 2. Do people who predominantly speak Southern Min have more difficulty and thus make more mistakes than people who predominantly speak Mandarin in distinguishing these two pairs of English vowels /ei; e/, and /ou; o/?

10. Research Questions RQ3. Are the abilities of distinguishing among the two pairs of vowels in perception and production interrelated? Can learners adequately pronounce sounds which are not well perceived, or is a good perception a prerequisite to accurate pronunciations? RQ4. According to the positive transfer, is it easier for Chinese students to distinguish the vowels /ei/ and /ou/ (as opposed to /e/ and /o/) in English because they are more similar to /ei/ and /ou/ in Mandarin?

11. Literature Review A. Contrastive Analysis (CA) Charles C. Fries (1945) Systematically compares similarities and differences between native languages and target languages. Brown (2000) It cannot be denied that interference from the first language does exist and Contrastive Analysis can help the teacher to explain difficulties students have with phonology.

12. B. Comparison of the Phonological Systems Articulatory characteristics of Mandarin vowels and English vowels Literature Review English Vowels Mandarin Vowels FrontnessHeightDiphthongizationLip roundingTenseness /e//e/ ㄝ mid- frontlower-midmonophthongunroundedlax /ei/ ㄟ mid- frontupper-middiphthongunroundedtense /o//o/ ㄛ mid-backlower-midmonophthongroundedlax /ou/ ㄡ mid-backupper-middiphthongroundedtense

13. C. Language Transfer Odlin, 1989; Hayes, 2003; Wu, 1987 Positive transfer : learners use the patterns or the sounds of their first language to help themselves learn and speed up their acquisition of the second language. (ex) Chinese subjects from Mainland China pronounce the English /ei/ and the Chinese ㄟ are the “most identical” vowels. Literature Review

14. Negative transfer : carries the usage, the patterns, and the sounds of the first language to a new language and leads to inappropriate forms of errors. (ex) an Arab student says, “I left my car in the barking.” Literature Review

15. D. Interlanguage Larry Selinker (1969) While learning a second language, the L2 learner will create a separate linguistic system which may preserve some features of their native language and mixed with their target language. (ex) Japanese people often say /l/ instead of /r/ in English as there isn’t a /r/ sound in Japanese. Literature Review

16. E. Perception and Production Perception refers to a person’s ability to comprehend contrastive phonemes. Production refers to the ability to articulate the various phonemes. Flege (1993) Learners of a second language must first be able to perceive the sounds of the second language in order to produce the sounds. Literature Review

17. Participant GroupNumberMajor Average years of learning English I20 vocational high school 6.55 II20Chinese major9.65 III20English major11.2 p.s The reason for recruiting group II was to avoid the negative language transfer from Southern Min.

18. Procedure Data Analysis Evaluation Englislh production test Mandarin production test English perception test Mandarin perception test Questionnaire Group I Group II Group III Develop Wordlist

19. Method – Contrastive Analysis A. Questionnaire 1. Biographical data : personal information, and languages used in their daily life. 2. Language learning experience data : their native language, second language, and personal attitudes toward English and Mandarin.

20. Method – Contrastive Analysis B. Mandarin Perception Test – ㄝㄟㄛㄡ (ex) 一樣請打 O ，不一樣請打 X ( 讀 ) 月 夜 _______ 羅 樓 _______ C. English Perception Test - /e/ /ei/ /o/ /ou/ (ex) test 勾選 /e/ 或 /ei/ ( 聽 ) 

21. Method – Contrastive Analysis D. Mandarin Production Test (ex) 誰 違 約 陪 姊 姊 上 街 買 茄 子、椰子 及 杯 水。 E. English Production Test (ex) Eight men stay in bed, get up late, and sell pepper and paper in May. p.s The production tests were recorded on a recorder. The tests were evaluated by three English judges and three Mandarin judges. 

22. Data Analysis

24. Results and Discussion RQ 1: Does the pronunciation of vowels in a native language interfere or help the pronunciation of vowels in second language? The perception of the vowels in Mandarin did not significantly interfere in English learning.

25. RQ 1 Mandarin production really interfered / helped English production. People who spoke Mandarin well could also speak English well.

26. Results and Discussion RQ 2: Do people who predominantly speak Southern Min have more difficulty and thus make more mistakes than people who predominantly speak Mandarin in distinguishing these two pairs of English vowels /ei; e/, and /ou; o/?

27. RQ 2 No significant difference.

28. RQ 2 No significant difference.

29. Results and Discussion RQ 3: Are the abilities of distinguishing among the two pairs of vowels in perception and production interrelated? Can learners adequately pronounce sounds which are not well perceived, or is a good perception a prerequisite to accurate pronunciations?

30. RQ 3 No significant difference.

31. RQ 3 The correlation between English perception and production of four vowels is significant. In other words, it is essential to perceive English vowels well if one wants to pronounce English vowels well and so is the other way around. 

32. Results and Discussion RQ 4: According to the positive transfer, is it easier for Chinese students to distinguish the vowels /ei/ and /ou/ (as opposed to /e/ and /o/) in English because they are more similar to /ei/ and /ou/ in Mandarin?

33. RQ 4 /ei/ and /e/ in Group II were significantly different. 

34. RQ 4 English tense vowles /ei/ and /ou/ were more difficult to pronounce than English lax vowels /e/ and /o/.

35. Conclusion 1. The subjects’ English diphthong vowels /ei/ and /ou/ were affected by the subjects’ Mandarin production of diphthong vowels /ei/ and /ou/. 2. There was no significant differences in distinguishing these two pairs of English vowels /e, o/, and /ei, ou/ between people who dominantly spoke Southern Min from those who dominantly spoke Mandarin.

36. Conclusion 3. The correlation between English perception and production of the four vowels was significant. In other words, it is very likely that if one wants to pronounce the four English vowels well, one needs to perceive the four English vowels. Additionally, if one speaks the language well, it’s very likely that one also perceives the language well.

37. Conclusion 4. Even though the English tense vowels /ei/ and /ou/ seem to be more similar to the Mandarin vowels /ei/ and /ou/, the English tense vowels /ei/ and /ou/ were more difficult to pronounce than the English lax vowels /e/ and /o/.

38. Diphthongization is the key difference between tense and lax vowels. If students cannot distinguish both the monophthong and diphthong vowels accurately when speaking and listening, there will be communication confusion and misunderstandings. A L2 teacher has the sound system knowledge of the learner’s native language, they will be more capable of diagnosing students’ difficulties. Pedagogical Implications

39. Based on the findings of this study, most of the subjects failed to perceive and produce some diphthong vowels, so teachers should emphasize minimal pairs in particular and show them the differences. (ex) pepper / paper hall / hole Pedagogical Implications

40. Limitations and Suggestions The number of the subjects selected could have been larger. The ages of the members in Group I are two to four years younger than the members of Groups II and III. Using subjects whose major, mother tongue and daily language is Southern Min, can give a more thorough insight into the interference of first language.

41. Critique #1  Perception Test RQ3. The correlation between English perception and production of the four vowels was significant.  Great idea for my thesis

42. Critique #2  Participant RQ4. English tense vowels /ei/ and /ou/ were more difficult to pronounce than English lax vowels /e/ and /o/.  Participants from Beijing

43. Critique #3  Evaluation Evaluation of the tests done by judges was too subjective.

44. Critique #4  Production Test Mandarin Production Test – reading English Production Test – listening

45. Any questions? Thank you~