Acquisition of english retroflex vowel [3] by EFL learners from Chinese dialectal regions- A case study of Beijing and Changsha

Abstract

This paper investigates, through an extensive acoustic analysis, the acquisition of English retroflex vowel [3] by learners of English as Foreign Language (EFL) from Beijing (BJ) and Changsha (CS), which are representative dialectal regions in the north and south China respectively. In our analysis, formant and duration were selected as parameters. The results demonstrate that all the EFL learners involved in the study produced the onset target and offset target of [3] with a more backward tendency. For formant patterns, both native speakers and EFL learners present a similar tendency, namely the decline of F3 and the rise of F2. For CS speakers, due to the effect of their mother tongue, their F3 falls more slowly. Moreover, from the spectral perspective, the F3 changing rate of CS male learners is significantly smaller than that of native speakers. On the other hand, BJ learners, especially female learners, show more obvious changes in F3 than native speakers. In addition, we speculate that the language background and gender can affect the acquisition of retroflex vowels.