The Discrimination of English Vowels by Cantonese ESL Learners in Hong Kong: A Test of the Perceptual Assimilation Model

Alice Y W Chan

doi:10.4236/ojml.2013.33025

Abstract

This article discusses the results of a study which investigated Cantonese ESL learners’ perception of English vowels and their perceived similarity between similar L1 and L2 vowels in an attempt to test the prediction of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM). Forty university English majors participated in three L2 perception tasks, which aimed at discerning their perception of English vowels spoken in different contexts, and one L1 L2 speech perception task, which aimed at discerning their classification of L2 vowels into native vowel categories and their perceived similarity between similar L1 and L2 vowels. It was found that their classifications of English vowels into Cantonese vowels and their perception of the corresponding English vowels did not provide strong support for the prediction of the model. The effects and extent of native language phonological influence are yet to be determined.

Highlights

A lot of research into second language phonology acquisition is centered around speech production, and mother tongue influence has often been argued as one major contributor to learner difficulties, in the sense that L2 sounds which are different from the L1 sounds are often difficult to produce
Flege (1995), for example, argues in his Speech Learning Model (SLM) that the more similar an L2 sound is to an L1 sound, the more problems an L2 learner will have in perceiving the L2 sound, because L2 learners are likely to judge L2 sounds as realizations of an L1 category
The present study examined ESL learners’ perception of L2 vowels and their perceived relations between L1 and L2 vowels with an aim to investigate the extent to which the prediction of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) regarding different pairs of non-native contrasts are valid for explaining second language phonology acquisition by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong

Summary

Introduction

A lot of research into second language phonology acquisition is centered around speech production, and mother tongue influence has often been argued as one major contributor to learner difficulties, in the sense that L2 sounds which are different from the L1 sounds are often difficult to produce. Similarities, rather than differences, between the native and target languages are seen as the main contributor to learner difficulties. Another wellknown model which attributes L2 learners’ discrimination problems to the phonetic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds is the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), to which the focus of the present article will turn

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion