The Acquisition of English Vowels Reflected in Taiwanese

EFL Learners

Raung-fu ChungSouthern Taiwan Universityrfchung@mail.stut.edu.tw

April 27, Hechun

Outline of the talk

1. Introduction

2. English as a second or a foreign language?

3. Vowels and vowel acquisition

4. Related theories: MDH and SLM

5. Cases

6. Concluding remarks

1. Introduction

a. English as a second or a foreign language in Taiwan?

b. English, as a matter of fact, as a third or a fourth language in Taiwan

(i) L1 = native language = Southern Min

(ii) L2 = lingua franca = Mandarin Chinese

(iii) L3 = foreign language = English

What effects to be considered?

1. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (Lado 1957)

If x exists in L2 but not L1, it would be difficult to be learned or acquired.

As predicted by CAH:

1. Phonology

Mandarin English

X []: think

[]: within

[]: usual

2. Syntax : relative clauses

Mandarin English

RC + NP NP + RC

他昨天買的書 The book that he

bought last night

Question:

If English in Taiwan is a third language, then English would be interfered with the first language (Southern Min) or the second language (Mandarin Chinese)?

L1 L3 L2

The question can be answered on the basis of Taiwanese English learners’ acquisition of English consonants or vowels.

However, the present study is entirely based on vowel acquisition.

Methodology

1. Subjects

2. Reading list

3. Recording

4. Data analysis

Subjects:

a. Elementary school students: 20 (10 M, and 10 F)

b. College students: 20 (10M, and 10 F)

Elementary Students:

• location: Tainan City

• Age: average 10

• Grade: 4th

• Language background: L1S.M.

L2Mandarin

L3English

• English learning experience: over 2 years

Recording word list--1

Praat System--1 F1 & F2 of [e] in “bay”

F1

F2

/i/ in 3 languages:

English vowel/ i / from bead

Mandarin vowel/ i / from 鼻子

S. M. vowel/ i / from 米香

F1F2

Further detailed

Vowel quality: formants

What is a formant?

• Ladefoged: A group of overtones corresponding to a resonating frequency of the air in the vocal tract. [P.293]

• Laver: They (formants) represent the acoustic consequences of the changing shapes of the mouth and pharynx in terms of the varying frequency-values of the resonances of the vocal tract. [P.103)

• Pickett: In speech, the resonances of the vocal tract are called formants.[P.23]

Vocal tract and its type in vowels:

Pickett 1999:41

Vocal tract shapes for vowels:

Acoustic cues for vowels:

F1: The value of F1 is in reverse proportion to the height of vowels: If F1 is lower, then the tongue position for the vowel is higher.

F2: The value of F2 is in proportion of the frontness of vowels: If F2 is lower, then it is more fronted in tongue position.

Formants of English vowels (Olive 1993)

Formants of a student’s English vowels

F1 & F2: a vowel chart

Vowels in other languages

Southern Min (12 males)

Mandarin Chinese

Thank you for your attention

Comments are welcome!