A Survey Of L2 English Nasals And Approximants Acquired By Junior High School Students

Phonetic acquisition of L2 segments plays an important role in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in China.Due to their ambiguous articulatory and acoustic nature as well as the influence of Chinese dialect,English nasals and approximants tend to be difficult for L2 English learners.Through the phonetic experiment paradigm,the present study focuses on the acquisition of L2 English nasals and approximants by junior high school students?JHSSs?by addressing the following research questions:1.To what extent can junior high school students acquire English nasals and approximants correctly?2.What are the acoustic features of English nasals and approximants produced by junior high school students?3.What are the typical errors in their production of English nasals and approximants?A phonetic experimental design was adopted,and the subjects were 30 Mandarin Grade 8 junior high school students from a junior high school in Yangzhou City.2 English phoneticians from the University of Cambridge were viewed as RP speakers?Received Pronunciation?.The experimental material consists of three English nasals and four English approximants in citation form?syllable initial,middle and final?and connected speech.The target English nasals and approximants embedded in 17 carrier words in the same carrier sentence Say_<sub><sub><sub><sub><sub>again as citation form and 7 variant sentences as connected speech.The data of subjects were recorded in a computer classroom at the quiet dusk by means of the professional recording equipment while the data of native British English speakers were recorded at the lab of University of Cambridge.Finally,all the recorded data were digitalized,annotated and analyzed acoustically via Praat 6019₆4 and statistically via SPSS 22.0 and EXCEL 2016.The results of the data analyses reveal the following findings:Firstly,the overall correct acquisition rates?OCAR?of all English nasals and approximants in citation form and connected speech by junior high school students are 78.25%and 77.58%respectively,with an average OCAR 77.92%.In citation form,/n/in word-initial position is most acquired by subjects?93.34%?.The least acquired segment is/l/in word-final position?only 31.67%?.In connected speech,/n/in word-initial position is still the best acquired segment?96.67%?./l/in word-final position is still the least acquired segment?35.00%?.Secondly,from the aspects of duration and formants,the acoustic features of English nasals and approximants produced by junior high school students show significant difference with those of RP speakers.The duration of English nasals and approximants in word-initial and word-medium position produced by subjects are longer than those by RP speakers,while the duration of English nasals and approximants in word-final position produced by subjects are shorter than those by RP speakers.As for formants,F1 of target segments by subjects are higher than those by RP speakers,indicating that subjects'tongue position is lower?the higher F1 value is,the lower tongue position is?.F2 of target segments by subjects are higher than those by RP speaker,indicating that subjects' tongue position is fronter?the higher F2 value is,the higher tongue position is?.F3 is affected by tongue tip,and F3 significantly drops when the tip of the tongue rises and rolls up.F3 of target segments by subjects are relatively higher than those by RP speakers.Thirdly,three kinds of typical errors in the production of English nasals and approximants are:deviated pronunciation,replacement and omission.Half of the subjects misspoke singer into/???/.Besides,/???/was misspoken as/n/.Even some subjects missed the pronunciation of/n/and/???/or misplaced nasalization of vowels with nasal coda when they are in word-final position.Some subjects replaced/l/with/r/or/n/.Dark/l/in word-final position was deleted.Moreover,English/r/was replaced with Chinese fricative/???/./w/was replaced with fricative/v/and Chinese/???/Furthermore,Subjects were more likely to replace/j/with/i:/.