An Experimentail Study On Perception And Production Of English Diphthongs By Chinese College EFL Learners

The research on speech perception and production is one of the hot issues of experimental speech research at home and abroad recently.Most researches focus on monophthong perception and production by second or foreign language learners(Mora & Fullana,2007;Fu,2010;Makarova,2010;Mora,Keidel & Flege,2010;Lin,2013;Lin,2014)while the number of the research on perception and production of diphthong is not sufficient.It is known that diphthong is compound vowel with the pronunciation of gliding from first phoneme to the second.However,Chinese EFL learners tend to be interfered with their first language and pronounce English diphthongs inadequately or excessively.Therefore,this study has explored the perception and production of English diphthongs by forty-nine Shandong Agricultural University’s non-English major students who are from Guangxi dialectal region by use of experimental speech analysis in hope of enriching the experimental speech research on perception and production of English diphthongs and providing useful instructions for teaching and learning of English diphthongs in China.The experimental materials recorded were annotated by the speech analysis software Praat,then specific scripts were run to extract the required data,and the final data were processed and drawn with the aid of SPSS and Excel.The research questions of this study are as follows:(1)To what degrees do the Chinese EFL students perceive and produce English diphthongs correctly?(2)By comparing with the native speakers,what are the acoustic features of the production of English diphthongs by Chinese EFL students?(3)What is the correlation of perception with production of English diphthongs by Chinese EFL students?The findings suggest that the whole correct perception rate of English diphthongs by CCEFLSs is 97.93%,and the best perceived diphthong is /e?/ while /e?/ is the worst perceived diphthong.The total correct production rate of English diphthongs by CCEFLSs is 95.29%.Among the eight English diphthongs,the best produced diphthong is /a?/ and /??/ is the worst produced.Combined the data analysis of formants(F1 and F2)with acoustic vowel charts,it indicates the Chinese college EFL students didn’t acquire English diphthongs correctly.They produced English diphthongs inadequately or excessively.Differences between Chinese college EFL students and American native speakers are in vowel height and advancement for the former do not have a good command of the articulated tongue position of English diphthongs’ two elements in starting and ending phases.Moreover,the total durations of English diphthongs by Chinese college EFL students are longer than that by the American native speakers,except that the total duration of /??/ and /a?/ are slightly shorter than that of American native speakers.Differences of total duration of English diphthongs greatly exist in /??/ and /??/.For the ratio of inner duration,except for /e?/,difference is significant in beginning phase,transition phase and ending phase for /a?/,/e?/,/??/,/??/,/??/,/a?/ and /??/ in different word phonetic contexts.Finally,the results display that the correct rates of perception and production of English diphthongs by Chinese college EFL students have a negative correlation with each other through Pearson Analysis and Linear Analysis.Meanwhile,the correct perception rate is higher than the correct production rate.These results have instructional significance for English phonetic teaching and learning in China.On one hand,English educators should have a good knowledge of phonological system of English,Mandarin Chinese,or local dialects and improve their pronunciation accuracy of English;then,much attention should be paid to the pronunciation errors by learners and educators should introduce English phonetic knowledge in teaching practice;next,visual teaching can be carried out with the experimental speech analysis software to help learners better acquire English sounds.On the other,English learners should have a preliminary knowledge of English phonetic and distinguish the similarities and differences between their native language and English in order to avoid or minimize the impact of native language on English phonetic acquisition.