Perception And Production Of American English Diphthongs By Chinese EFL Learners

Compared to monophthongs,diphthongs are of distinct dynamic nature with a more complicated articulation process.Concerning Chinese EFL learners,relatively fewer studies have been conducted to investigate their production and perception of English diphthongs,especially American English diphthongs.Based on such a research background,this study takes Speech Learning Model(Flege,1995)as theoretical framework and aims to investigate Chinese EFL learners’ perception and production of American English diphthongs as well as to find out the relationship between speech perception and production.Three research questions are proposed in this study:(1)how do Chinese EFL learners perceive the five American English diphthongs?(2)what are the acoustic features of American English diphthongs produced by Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers?(3)what is the relationship between Chinese EFL learners’ perception and production of American English diphthongs?Both perception and production experiments are conducted.In the perception experiment,twenty Chinese subjects identify the five American English diphthongs.In the production experiment,the acoustic measurements include duration,F1 and F2 values at the onset and the offset as well as F2 rate of change.The major findings in this study are listed as follows.(1)English /o?/ is perceived as a “new” L2 sound,while /a?/,/e?/,/a?/ and /??/ are perceived as “similar” L2 sounds to Chinese /ai/,/ei/,/ɑ?/ and /ou/.(2)In terms of the acoustic features of English diphthongs,significant between-group difference is found in the tongue position of Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.Compared to native English speakers,/a?/ produced by Chinese subjects has a more advanced offset and there is an L1-to-L2 influence in female Chinese subjects’ production of English /a?/.Besides,/e?/ produced by female Chinese has a lower onset but /e?/ produced by male Chinese has a higher and more advanced offset with a larger tongue movement due to the influence of Chinese /ei/.As for /??/,Chinese subjects produce it with a more backward tongue than English speakers at both the onset and the offset,which is influenced by Chinese /ou/.Besides,due to the influence of Chinese /ɑ?/,English /a?/produced by male Chinese has a higher and more backward onset with a smaller tongue movement than native speakers.As for /o?/,significant difference is only found in the smaller tongue movement by female Chinese subjects.(3)The greater perceived similarity of English /a?/,/e?/,/??/ and /a?/ accounts for the L1-to-L2 influence reported in the production experiment,which indicates that Chinese EFL learners’ perception of American English diphthongs precedes the production.The findings above indicate that Chinese EFL learners fail to produce American English diphthongs as native-like as English speakers.Chinese subjects’ production of the four “similar” diphthongs supports the hypotheses in the Speech Learning Model that “similar” L2 sounds are relatively more difficult to learn for L2 learners.