The Influence of Chinese Dialect on English Pronunciation Acquisition: Evidence from Liaoning Accent as An Example

Abstract

It is universally known that people are always affected by their mother tongue during the process of second language acquisition (SLA), especially in the aspect of speaking. In the circumstance that there are huge differences between the two languages, the accent of L1 will be transferred into L2 unconsciously by the learners. Chinese EFL learners can be deemed as one of the typical examples. There are varieties of accents in each province or region of China; hence the learners usually speak English in the way of their dialects pronunciation. This article found the following problems by analyzing the questionnaire: the Liaoning learners are prone to adding rhotic sound and pronounce it clearly at each word; they are used to add stress in the end of sentences; also, they are more likely to speak fast so that some vowel may be ignored. And all these phenomena are generated because these features exist in the Liaoning accent itself, and they are negatively transferred into the English speaking.