Perception and Production of English Front Vowels by Taiwanese EFL Learners

Abstract

The study aimed to compare the perception and production of English front vowel pairs: /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/ae/ and to identify their perception-production link by Taiwanese EFL learners through minimal-pair tests. Twenty Grade 6 elementary school students in Taiwan were randomly selected to be engaged in two tests with 4 front vowels (/i/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ae/) embedded in ten monosyllabic words respectively for perception and production. The results revealed that the performance of Taiwanese EFL learners on the /i/-/ɪ/pair was significantly better than that on the /ɛ/-/ae/ pair both in terms of perception and production. To be more specific, the participants perceived and produced /i/ significantly better than /ɪ/. The production performance of /ɛ/ was significantly better than that of /ae/ whereas the perception performance of /ae/ was slightly better than that of /ɛ/. A positive relationship between perception and production of these two front vowel pairs was also proven. Pedagogical implications of the study and suggestions for future studies were discussed in the end.