A Study On The Perception And Production Of English Nasals By Yuanqu EFL Learners

On the basis of the relevant theories and studies about English phonetics and nasals,the researcher studies the perception and production of English nasals by Yuanqu EFL learners from the perspective of acoustic phonetics.The research questions to be addressed are as follows:1)To what extent do Yuanqu EFL learners perceive and produce English nasals correctly?2)How do Yuanqu EFL learners perceive and produce English nasals in different phonetic contexts?3)Does Yuanqu EFL learners' perception of English nasals correlate with their production of English nasals?The subjects of the study are 20 senior high school students in Grade Two from Zhong Tiao High School,Yuanqu.The materials of the experiments are the three English nasals in different phonetic contexts,i.e.word-initial,word-medium and word-final.Two experiments are carried out to answer the research questions,Identification Test and Word Reading Test,both of them are conducted in a soundproof room.The perceptive accuracy of the subjects is obtained through their scores in the Identification Test.As for the calculation of the productive accuracy,the first step is recording the subjects' pronunciation with the software Cool Edit Pro 2.0,and the next step is analyzing the recorded data with the acoustic analysis software Praat,extracting the required acoustic parameters,and the last step is rating on the basis of the data.Then SPSS Pearson Bivariate Correlation is carried out to find out the correlation between the subjects' perception and production of English nasals.The major findings are as follows:1.The subjects' overall accurate perceptual acquisition rate is 57.31%,and accurate productive acquisition rate is 72.68%.Both of them are below 80%,it indicates that the English nasals are difficult for Yuanqu EFL learners.2.In terms of perception,the best perceived nasal is/m/in the word-initial position,with the accurate acquisition rate of 88.33%;while the worst perceived one is/?/in word-medium position,with an exceptionally low correct rate of 10.00%.As regards production,the best produced nasal is/m/in word-initial position,the accurate acquisition rate is 100%;the least produced one is/?/in word-medium position,the accurate rate is only 1.67%.3.As for the acoustic features,the performance of the subjects is not optimistic.The duration and formants produced by most of the subjects have significant difference with that of native English speakers.When the nasal is in the initial position,the duration of the subjects' production is generally shorter than that of native English speakers;when the nasal is in the medium and final positions,the duration is generally longer than that of native English speakers.And most of the F1 and.F2 of the English nasals produced by the subjects are lower than that of native English speakers,which means that most of the subjects have higher and posterior tongue position when they pronounce the English nasals.4.SPSS Pearson Bivariate Correlation is carried out to find out the relationship between perception and production of English nasals by Yuanqu EFL learners,and the correlation between them is not found in the present study(r =.019,p =.936,p>0.05).In other words,there exists inconsistency between successful perception and successful production of English nasals.The subjects who can successfully perceive English nasals are not sure to produce the nasals correctly,and those who perform well in producing some of English nasals may perform badly in perceiving them.These findings may provide some implications for phonetic learning and teaching for EFL learners in Yuanqu.First and foremost,learners should correct their attitudes towards phonetic learning,and realize the importance of phonetic in English learning,then do some specific practice.Second,the teachers should equipped themselves with professional English phonetic knowledge,and the contrast of English and Chinese phonetics should also be highlighted in English class so that the learners can be aware of the similarities and differences between their L1 and L2 phonological systems,then they can correct their common errors in pronunciation accordingly.Lastly,the teachers can make full use of modern scientific and technological means to improve English phonetic teaching,such as Praat,it is powerful in presenting acoustic features of the sounds,such as waveform,formants,and duration and so on.It can not only help students find their problems in pronunciation more visually,but also improve the operability and enjoyment of speech learning.