A Typological Study Of English Vowel Acquisition By Chinese EFL Learners

This thesis studies the acquisition of ten English monophthongs by Chinese EFL learners from different dialectal regions,and compares their output with native English speakers' to explore the accuracy.In this current study,learners' dialect and mandarin are taken as the first and second language respectively,and how these two languages interact into their third language acquisition,that is English,is investigated.Comparing with previous studies,this research has the following innovations: firstly,subjects come from different dialectal regions are selected to explore the influence of dialect background on English vowel production,and the common characteristics of English acquisition by learners of different dialect backgrounds.Secondly,learners' dialect and mandarin are taken as the first and second language,and the interactive influence of the two on the three languages,namely English,is discussed.Thirdly,the study involves all the ten English monophthongs,and thus would provides us with a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese English vowel acquisition.Specifically,this study explores the following issues:1.How do Chinese learners acquire English corner vowels? Does their pronunciation deviate from native American speakers? If so,how does their dialect and mandarin affect their pronunciation?2.Do Chinese learners contrast English tense and lax vowels more on spectral or temporal basis? Besides,how learners' dialect and mandarin influence their production,both in vowel formants and vowel length?3.How do Chinese learners acquire the remaining English vowels? Do similar vowels in their previously acquired language facilitate their acquisition?The results reveal that affected by their dialect and mandarin,learners' production of/a/,/u/ varies a lot,yet /i/ is acquired with quite accuracy.Then,their production of English tense and lax vowels differ greatly in duration,while the spectral features vary in terms of different vowel pairs.Finally,Chinese learners acquire the remaining four vowels rather poor,and similar vowels in learners' previously acquired languages do not necessarily promote their acquisition of English vowels,and learners' performance differs from each other greatly.