Production of English Tense and Lax Vowel Contrasts in Chinese Learners of English

Introduction

Many non-native learners of English have struggled to produce English tense and lax vowel contrasts. In the previous article， the experiment evaluated the perception of English tense and lax vowel contrasts with different durations in Chinese learners of English and this paper examined how the participants produced the English tense and lax vowels as judged by native English speakers. This study was designed to discuss the following question：

How do Chinese learners of English perform in the production of English tense and lax vowels /i/-/?/ and /u/-/?/as judged by the native English speakers？

Literature Review

An increasing number of researchers have drawn their attention to vowel distinctions with various factors accounted for the perception and production of language pronunciation （Flege， 2003； Escudero， 2006； Romero and Rallo Fabra 2012）， in particular， many studies have been conducted on the production in second language acquisition （Lee et al.， 2006； Flege et al.， 2001； Yang， 2011）， which facilitate better understanding of L2 learners production problems on their language development. Other studies have employed auditory and visual stimuli to demonstrate linguistic phenomena （Hardison， 2003； Hincks， 2003）. Furthermore， a large number of studies have investigated consonant acquisition， particularly， the English /r/-/l/ distinction by Japanese speakers （Aoyama et al.， 2004； Iverson and Hattori， 2009； Pisoni et al.， 1997）.

On the whole， English tense and lax vowels are not easy for non-native speakers to produce. That is why more research was needed to explore whether Chinese learners of English could correctly produce tense and lax vowels and whether the results of their perception patterns in my previous study were correlated with the results of their production patterns.

Production Study Experiment

In my previous article， the perception experiment aimed to evaluate whether Chinese learners of English could perceive the tense and lax vowels when those vowels were manipulated into different durations. However， this did not distinguish whether the perceptual results were related to the production of English tense and lax vowels on Chinese learners of English. It was expected that good perception might guarantee good production. Therefore， the researcher hypothesized that their performance on perception of tense and lax vowels might highly correlate with their production of those vowels.

Methods

Participants. Three Chinese learners of English who participated in the perception experiment also participated in this experiment as speakers.

Data collection. All the recordings were made in the soundproof booth using the software Pratt （Boersma & Weenink， 2013） at the Phonetics/Speech Laboratory of the University of Victoria. The researcher explained the reading tasks to the three Chinese learners of English. They individually read the words list in isolation at a normal speed and each word was required to be read five times. For consistency， eight chosen words contained /sVt/ syllables， that is to say， four targeted English vowels in words and four distracters with different English vowels used in Experiment 2. A total of 120 vowel tokens （8 vowels x 3 speakers x 5 repetitions） were recorded for an identification task using two native English-speaking judges （a Canadian English speaker and an American English speaker） who have majored in Linguistics. In view of the purpose of this experiment， in most cases， the first token （a preparation section） and the last token （a least concentrated section） were not taken into account， therefore， only the second， third and fourth tokens in the categories were analyzed by the raters. For each participant， there was a total of 36 tokens （4 vowels x 3 speakers x 3 repetitions） to be evaluated. The native English-speaking judges were tested in a quiet room at the Phonetics/Speech Laboratory on a computer. All the recordings were played through headphones （dynamic stereo MDR-7506）. According to the instructions， the native English raters were able to listen to target productions as many times as possible before marking different symbols in the margins of the specified options on a prepared answer sheet. The judges were not told which vowel pairs the participants produced so as to examine whether the participants could produce those vowels in a correct way or not. Meanwhile， corresponding description or comments were made by the raters.

Results and Discussion. Table 1 presented the results of the production of the four vowels by participant 1， as judged by the two native English-speaking judges. Although Participant 1 correctly produced /i/ and /?/， she could not keep the same rhythm when she produced this vowel pair and it seemed that she overly changed the length of the two vowels in order to distinguish this vowel pair. However， the native English speakers would not perform in this way. As to the vowel /u/， according to the judges opinions， the production of the vowel /u/ was correct， but her productions of suit had /i/ sound added before the vowel /u/. When the vowel /?/ was produced， it should be noted that this participant produced soot as /sut/ rather than /s?t/. This result demonstrated that participant 1 performed less correctly in production than her performance in perception even though she got 100% correct scores in her perceptual testing. This would emphasize that good perception is not always consistent with good production.

Table 1 The Results of Production of Tense and

Lax Vowels by Participant 1

Words

No. NoNo. 1 2 3 4 5

seat / √ √ √ /

sit / √ √ √ /

suit / X /iu/ X /iu/ X /iu/ /

soot / X /u/ X /u/ X /u/ /

Table 2 presented the results of the production of four vowels by participant 2， as judged by the two native English-speaking judges. Participant 2 correctly produced the vowel /i/， but for her production of sit， the two raters showed slight different opinions towards the vowel quality of this word performed by this participant. One rater judged her /i/ sound was correct， but the other rater evaluated that her production of /i/ was between /?/ and /i/， which illustrated that although some people may understand what she pronounced， some people may not. When /u/ was produced， the vowel quality in suit was more like /?/. Notably， she correctly produced the vowel /?/ as in soot， and this result was contradictory to her perceptual performance.

Table 2 The Results of Production of Tense and

Lax Vowels by Participant 2

Words

No. NoNo. 1 2 3 4 5

seat / √ √ √ /

sit / √ X /i/ - √ X /i/ /

suit / X /?/ X /?/ X /?/ /

soot / √ √ √ /

Table 3 presented the results of the production of four vowels by participant 3， as judged by the two native English-speaking judges. Participant 3 correctly produced the vowel /i/ as in seat， but when he produced it in the word sit， one of the judges suggested that his pronunciation was marginally like vowel /i/. As to the vowel pair /u/ and /?/， the participant could correctly produce /u/ as in suit but he presented the wrong production of the vowel in soot. A notable aspect of the results was that on production of both suit and sit， this participant used a glide to bridge the /s/ and /u/， producing soot as /siut/ and suit as /si：ut/ with a lengthened /i：/. The researcher assumed that this participant was trying to distinguish these two vowels by changing the length of the glide， however， this context didnt exist in English vowel systems. In English， /siut/ and /si：ut/ have the same phoneme， and changing the vowel length does not change the meaning of the words. Considering the participants interlanguage， he may think that there were two different phonemes and those differences could change the meaning of the words.

Table 3 The Results of Production of Tense and

Lax Vowels by Participant 3

Words@No. NfdfdfNpNoNo. 1 2 3 4 5

seat / √ √ √ /

sit / √ X /i/-√ X /i/-√ /

suit / X /i：u/ X /i：u/ X /i：u/ /

soot / X /iu/ X /iu/ X /iu/ /

Conclusions

In production experiment， the Chinese learners of English could produce /i/-/?/ in the pair of targeted words. Comparatively， the /u/-/?/ pair was more difficult for Chinese learners of English to produce. In the experiment， the participants produced the pronunciation of the /i/-/?/ pair better than the /u/-/?/ pair. More importantly， in the production study， the participants had a problem with duration in producing the correct vowel sounds.

However， there are a few limitations to this study. First， the samples used in this study are limited， therefore， further research should enlarge the sample population to examine these vowel pairs more accurately and validate the generalization of the findings. Furthermore， other vowel pairs could be examined， such as /?/-/?/， to check whether the results correlate or not. Moreover， the evaluation in the production experiment from two raters who come from different countries would still produce slightly different conclusions by their different language backgrounds， it would be more feasible to have raters who speak the same form of English， for example， all Canadian English speakers or all British English speakers. In addition， this study is mainly a qualitative study， therefore， future studies could be further conducted with a larger population of participants by a statistical analysis.

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作者简介：袁勤（1981-），女，湖北沙市人，三亚学院外国语学院英语系讲师，加拿大维多利亚大学语言学系在读博士研究生，研究方向第二语言习得，英语教学法。