Abstract
The present study investigated the gender differences in producing all English rounded vowels /u:/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/ and /o/ in Iranian EFL learners' speech in comparison with native ones. Sixty Iranian EFL learners including 30 males and 30 females were selected as the participants of this study. Oxford proficiency test (OPT, 2001) was conducted in order to ensure the learners were truly homogenous with regard to their English proficiency level. All learners were right-handed, Persian monolingual native speakers with no brain injuries, hearing or visual problems that interfered with their performance in the test. Four words containing English round vowels with CVC syllable structure were selected and put inside the carrier sentence ''Say......please''. In fact, each learner uttered the carrier sentences separately. Via PRAAT software (win 64), the voices of the participants were recorded and analyzed for obtaining the first and the second formants (F1 and F2) of each vowel. The obtained data from male and female speeches were compared to each other to find their differences. The results showed in F2 values, there were gender differences considering the consonantal context. This study demonstrated that for males, the degree of backness of vowel /u:/ was less than that of vowel /ɔ:/, but for females it was vice versa. For both vowels, male's mean F1 was lower than female's mean F1 and male's mean F2 was higher than female's mean F2. The present study showed gender differences in producing English rounded vowels. So, the results can be used in classes which contain only one gender. The findings of this study can bring about some pedagogical implications for teaching English diphthongs, triphthongs and English rounded vowels.
Highlights
Gender differences, English round vowels, Iranian EFL learners' speech, first formant (F1), second formant (F2), acoustic phonetics, rounded vowels
Acoustic phonetics is called one of the sub-branches of phonetics which according to Birjandi and Salmani-Nodoushan (2005) is "the study of the sound waves produced by the human vocal apparatus"(p. 6), this study can be called physical properties of speech sounds
In order to compare male's and female's production of the English round vowels it was considered to be essential to have their F1s and F2s, so we obtained them by PRATT software
Summary
English round vowels, Iranian EFL learners' speech, first formant (F1), second formant (F2), acoustic phonetics, rounded vowels. 1. Introduction 1 "Phonetics is a branch of linguistics which is concerned with the production, physical nature, and perception of speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics is called one of the sub-branches of phonetics which according to Birjandi and Salmani-Nodoushan (2005) is "the study of the sound waves produced by the human vocal apparatus"(p. Biological factors are not the only reasons that can cause these differences; society may cause some differences, so they have sociolinguistic differences These factors affect different aspects of their lives, one of these aspects is the way they speak and produce the sounds of language
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