A Case Study on American English Front Vowel Quality and How Native Language Transfer Could Affect Pronunciation

Xiaomu Ren

doi:10.23977/curtm.2018.11003

Abstract

Daily communication shows that some English front vowels are distinguishably produced by American English speakers and Mandarin speakers. Applying acoustic research method, this paper conducts a case study involving three native English speakers and three Mandarin speakers. The comparison is made between these two groups of speakers on the mean of F1 and F2 of front vowels /iː/, /ɪ/, /eɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/. Based on the measurement of vowel quality, this research also explores that in what ways or to what degree native language transfer could affect the pronunciation.

Highlights

1.1 Research backgroundNegative transfer or positive transfer is a behavioral psychology term referring to the interference of the previous knowledge with new learning
(3) /æ/ produced by Mandarin speakers has lower F1 and lower F2. (I.e., /æ/ produced by Mandarin speakers is higher, more central and get more close to /ɛ/.)
The T-test shows no significant difference between the /eɪ/ produced by Mandarin and American English speakers, even though we can find in the data that /eɪ/ is lower and more central when it is pronounced by Mandarin speakers

Summary

Research background

Negative transfer or positive transfer is a behavioral psychology term referring to the interference of the previous knowledge with new learning. The transfer in language addresses the phenomenon that speakers or writers applying the knowledge from one language to another, especially from their native language to a nonnative language. This negative transference of mother language shows the language interference could be the source of error. It is well-known that most of L21 speakers do not have many difficulties in writing, but suffer a lot in listening and speaking. As an obligatory subject in China, is learnt by Chinese children from very young age. From my observation, it is still a tedious process for Chinese

Literature review

Grounding

Methods

Results and Analysis

Discussion