English Vowels Research Articles

Comparing pre-linguistic normalization models against US English listeners’ vowel perception

One of the central computational challenges for speech perception is that talkers differ in pronunciation--i.e., how they map linguistic categories and meanings onto the acoustic signal. Yet, listeners typically overcome these difficulties within minutes (Clarke & Garrett, 2004; Xie et al., 2018). The mechanisms that underlie these adaptive abilities remain unclear. One influential hypothesis holds that listeners achieve robust speech perception across talkers through low-level pre-linguistic normalization. We investigate the role of normalization in the perception of L1-US English vowels. We train ideal observers (IOs) on unnormalized or normalized acoustic cues using a phonetic database of 8 /h-VOWEL-d/ words of US English (N = 1240 recordings from 16 talkers, Xie & Jaeger, 2020). All IOs had 0 DFs in predicting perception—i.e., their predictions are completely determined by pronunciation statistics. We compare the IOs’ predictions against L1-US English listeners’ 8-way categorization responses for /h-VOWEL-d/ words in a web-based experiment. We find that (1) pre-linguistic normalization substantially improves the fit to human responses from 74% to 90% of best-possible performance (chance = 12.5%); (2) the best-performing normalization accounts centered and/or scaled formants by talker; and (3) general purpose normalization (C-CuRE, McMurray & Jongman, 2011) performed as well as vowel-specific normalization.

The Pronunciation Problems among Kurdish Learners of English

The goal of this study was to examine the pronunciation issues of different speakers of English and especially Kurdish speakers, and various perspectives on native vs foreign pronunciations. The research showed that Kurdish speakers had difficulties pronouncing several English vowels and some English consonants. The research results demonstrate that Kurdish English speakers understand the value of pronunciation compared to native and non-native English speakers. Kurdish speakers may hesitate to speak in a manner that seems natural to a native speaker, and their last consonants in words are almost always unaspirated and unvoiced. Given that Kurdish learners of English have difficulty pronouncing some English words, some suggested solutions include providing pronunciation instruction classes to language instructors, having educators speak in English, and giving students examples of native tongue sounds compared and contrasted with the target language sounds. With minimal exposure to cooperation with native speakers and variations in L1's phonological organization compared to English, the difficulty posed by pronunciation is evident. All the updated studies clearly show that these issues affect English speakers in general and rely less and less on their original tongue.

المشاكل التي يواجهها الناطقون بالإنجليزية عند قراءة القرآن الكريم: عرضها ومعالجتها

In this article, I conducted research on the similarities and differences between consonants and vowels of both Arabic and English, so that it may help teachers of the Quran in English- speaking countries, for example, the United Kingdom. I explored the translation of very difficult terms used in tajweed such as قلقلة which is in the phonetics of English “consonant release” if this term is literally translated to the native speaker by saying that it is the giving of movement to a sound in the place of articulationمخرج they will not understand it. Similarly, I explored the terms the place of articulation and manner of articulation for مخرج and صفة consecutively, homorganic for مشترك المخرج from the books of phonetics. If the Arabic terms are translated in this way, for example, the exit of sound it will be difficult for the students to understand. We usually find in the books that some consonants like ج، ذال ، وزاء are equivalent to Z , th, and ز sound , but I added the condition that they must be between two voiced sounds like vowels. For example, I concluded that ذال is like “th” in “within”, because in other contexts they become devoiced and resemble ث، س and چ. Dark L of English was judged as equal to لام مفخمة and it was made clear that if the teachers of Quranic recitation translate it to dignified L or honored L the native students will not understand them. It was suggested to the teachers to obverse the كاف sound in the reading of the students when it is in the stressed syllables such as "كلّا، "كالوا"so that aspiration after كاف is checked, because such kind of aspiration does not exist in Arabic. Similarly, when نون ساكن occurs before كاف in words like “إن كنتم" English speakers are liable to add ng sound (like that in “bank” of English) before كاف. The article has covered much information, the most important of which has been put forth in the summary also.

How Are British English Vowels Perceived? Evidence from Yemeni EFL Learners

The current study examines the perception of the British English (BE) vowels by Yemeni EFL undergraduate learners. Specifically, all the BE vowels (except schwa) were investigated to explore the most misperceived English vowels by 67 EFL learners at different proficiency levels- beginners, intermediate and advanced. A perception test, which measured the learners’ perception of the of BE vowels, and a questionnaire, which mainly measured participants’ level of difficulty they experience in perceiving these English sounds, were used to collect data from the learners. Overall, the results revealed that the vowels of BE present a serious problem to Yemeni EFL learners as they could not identify these non-native speech sounds with high rates of correct perceptions. More specifically, it was found that lower- and higher-level learners showed similar misperception patterns of the BE vowels whereby they had the greatest difficulty in perceiving /eə, / æ/, /e /, / ɒ /, and /ʌ. Generally, in addition to the learning context, the teaching aids and the perceptual training, the misperceptions of BE vowels might also be due to the closeness and similarity existing among these English vowel segments.

Монгол оюутнуудын aнгли хэлний эгшиг авианы дуудлагын алдаанд хийсэн дүн шинжилгээ

The purpose of the present research study was to carry out an error analysis on the English vowel production by a cohort consists of 94 Mongolian intermediate level students. In this respect, we investigated the errors in a corpus of 94 versions of the speech produced by the intermediate students of the School of Arts and Sciences at NUM. All the errors related to the English vowel production in this article were identified, described, explained and evaluated according to Heidi Dulay, Marina Burt and Stephen Krashen’s taxonomy. Specifically, we aimed to identify the source of the errors. The findings demonstrated that the source of students' errors could be explained by interlingual and intralingual transfers. Furthermore, we wrote a recommendation for the students to improve their pronunciation.

Anisotropic minimum dissipation subgrid-scale model in hybrid aeroacoustic simulations of human phonation.

This article deals with large-eddy simulations of three-dimensional incompressible laryngeal flow followed by acoustic simulations of human phonation of five cardinal English vowels, /ɑ, æ, i, o, u/. The flow and aeroacoustic simulations were performed in OpenFOAM and in-house code openCFS, respectively. Given the large variety of scales in the flow and acoustics, the simulation is separated into two steps: (1) computing the flow in the larynx using the finite volume method on a fine moving grid with 2.2 million elements, followed by (2) computing the sound sources separately and wave propagation to the radiation zone around the mouth using the finite element method on a coarse static grid with 33 000 elements. The numerical results showed that the anisotropic minimum dissipation model, which is not well known since it is not available in common CFD software, predicted stronger sound pressure levels at higher harmonics, and especially at first two formants, than the wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity model. The model on turbulent flow in the larynx was employed and a positive impact on the quality of simulated vowels was found.

Analysis of Vowel Pronunciation Errors of Grade IX Students of MTs Harapan Jasa Langkat

This research aims to observe pronunciation errors and vowels of Grade IX students of MTs Harapan Jasa Makmur. Based on the observation, the writer noted that the students had difficulty differentiating English vowels. The type of this research was a qualitative method, which is descriptive and tends to use analysis and it was in the form of words instead of numbers. In this study, the main data collection techniques were participant observation, in-depth interviews, documentation studies, and a combination of the three or triangulation. The author chose class IX containing 7 students to be sampled in his research. The authors ran several tests that they spoke and recorded each word. after our research, it turns out that there were still many students who can't pronounce English enough. Around 50% of students are lacking in English pronunciation and the teacher's solution was by giving repetition and repeating the material that has been studied, especially English pronunciation.
 Key Words: Vowel Sound, Pronunciation Errors

STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN ENGLISH VOWEL PRONUNCIATION

This research aimed to describe students’ error in English vowel pronunciation and the factors caused these errors at fourth semester students in English Education Department of UMMY Solok in 2021/2022 academic year. The researcher found some problems in English vowel pronunciation; students had lack of knowledge of pronunciation and understanding of English words, and students struggled as there are no similar sounds of their original language or mother tongue in English. This research was conducted by using descriptive quantitative. The sample of the research was all fourth semester students in English Education Department of UMMY Solok in 2021/2022 academic year, which consist of 14 students. The data were collected through pronunciation test and questionnaire. The results of this research showed that the level of students score in English vowel pronunciation was “very good”. However, there are five majors of students’ error. These errors occurred in the pronunciation of vowels /ɪ/, /ɒ/, /ɔ:/, /ɜ:/, and /ǝ/. Then, the factor affecting students to do errors was interlingual errors, the errors caused by the difference between pronunciations letters of students’ first language with the target language. It is hoped that this research will be useful for the lecturers, students and the next researchers.

The impact of explicitly teaching word segmentation using a visual vowel hand sign system to help at-risk children learn to read and spell English: A proof-of-concept study

ABSTRACT English vowels are phonologically and orthographically more difficult than consonants when learning to map speech to print. We sought to determine if teaching young at-risk readers and spellers to use a visual vowel hand sign system to segment spoken words into their component phonemes contributed to improved grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge, word reading and spelling. Twenty-three at-risk Year 1 participants were assessed prior to receiving Crack the Code – an intervention that incorporates a visual vowel hand sign system for phoneme segmentation – and immediately after its completion on measures of segmentation, grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge, word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency and spelling. Analysis of group data showed statistically significant improvement across all measures with effect sizes ranging from 0.73 to 1.83. Explicitly teaching phonemic segmentation with a visual vowel sign system may be an effective way of improving vowel knowledge, word reading and spelling skills of at-risk children.

Mapping sounds in the commercial linguistic landscape of Kuwait: A workable solution

The field of linguistic landscape research has shown considerable interest in visual communication in the urban global landscape in recent years. This paper explores Kuwait's linguistic landscape through an examination of shop signs displayed in commercial streets. A total of five hundred and ninety-nine photographs of shop signs on three streets in three different areas were taken and categorized. The streets were selected based on traffic and diversity. The linguistic landscape framework facilitates an understanding of the progress of the urban space as well as the relevance and dominance of language(s). The present study considers not only the signs' content but also the language(s) covered and their hierarchy, location and function in the urban community and space. The findings indicate that the linguistic landscape formed by Kuwait's signs is influenced by the shops' geographical location, prestige, and ethnolinguistic composition. While the major focus of mainstream research is the collection and analysis of (shop) signs, the present project goes beyond that to offer a solution to the problem of proper sound production of Arabized English shop names that uses designated individual orthographic symbols in Arabic to represent both the consonants and vowels of English. The solution foregrounds and eases the process of pronouncing businesses' names as well as understanding their nature and the services they offer with minimal effort.

Predicting discrimination difficulty of Californian English vowel contrasts from L2-to-L1 categorization

L1-Spanish-Catalan speakers often face difficulties when learning the English vowel system. PAM/PAM-L2 posits that native language experience shapes perception of L2 sounds, so discrimination of L2 contrasts can be predicted from L2-to-L1 categorization. The current study focused on whether discrimination of the nine Californian English vowel contrasts /i/-/ɪ/, /ɛ/-/ɪ/, /ɛ/-/ə/, /æ/-/ʌ/, /æ/-/ɑ/, /ɑ/-/ʌ/, /ə/-/ʌ/, /ə/-/ʊ/, and /u/-/ʊ/ can be accounted for by the perceptual assimilation of these vowels to L1-Catalan categories. Experienced L1-Spanish-Catalan learners of English performed categorization with goodness rating and AXB discrimination tasks. The vowels /i/, /u/, /æ/, and /ɑ/ were categorized, while /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ʌ/, /ə/, /ɝ/, and /ʊ/ were not consistently mapped onto a single Majorcan Catalan category. Discrimination of the vowel contrasts /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/ə/, and /ʊ/-/ə/ was very high (>90%). The contrasts /ɪ/-/ɛ/, /æ/-/ɑ/, and /æ/-/ʌ/ were also well discriminated (>80%). In contrast, /ʌ/-/ɑ/ and /ʌ/-/ə/ were discriminated less accurately. Percent overlap scores predicted discrimination accuracy at the group level. At the individual level, discrimination could only be predicted for the contrasts /i/-/ɪ/, /ɪ/-/ɛ/, /u/-/ʊ/, and /ɛ/-/ə/. The results are discussed in terms of three L2 speech learning models, PAM-L2, SLM-r and L2LP.

Investigating the Effects of Speaker Variability on Arabic children’s Acquisition of English Vowels

Investigating the Effects of Speaker Variability on Arabic children’s Acquisition of English Vowels

Pronunciation Error of English Vowels in Reading Descriptive Text of MI Rare Muchtary Students

This research aims to investigated error pronunciation vowel in reading text descriptive MI Rare Muchtary students. The purpose of this study aims to identify kind of error in students pronunciation when they read description text, analyzed the factor of error in pronunciation, and analyzed learning strategy to improve their pronunciation. This research conducted mixed method, there are qualitative and quantitative approach. The qualitative approach used descriptive analysis method, and for qualitative approach used data analysis statistic. The data drawn through sound recording students at the time read descriptive text, then the data transcribed phonetic students to know in error. The purpose of this study is students error pronunciation in vokoid and diphthongs is 404. Error included the omission 11, addition 62 as substitution 335. Factors causing students derived from a pronunciation is interlingual, intralingual dandevelopmental error. Researchers used reading aloud strategy to increase the students pronunciation. The result of this study can be seen from the pre test mean 75.70 and post test 78.39. Therefore, reading aloud is can increase students pronunciation significantly.

Memory-card vowel training for child and adult second-language learners: A first report.

Japanese adults and Spanish-Catalan children received auditory phonetic training for English vowels using a novel paradigm, a version of the common children's card game Concentration. Individuals played a computer-based game in which they turned over pairs of cards to match spoken words, drawn from sets of vowel minimal pairs. The training was effective for adults, improving vowel recognition in a game that did not explicitly require identification. Children likewise improved over time on the memory card game, but not on the present generalisation task. This gamified training method can serve as a platform for examining development and perceptual learning.

Contrastive Analysis between Vowel Sounds of English and Fur Languages

Contrastive Analysis between Vowel Sounds of English and Fur Languages

Effects of Word Stress on Vowel Duration and Vowel Quality in the Speech of Korean Learners of English

Unstressed English vowels are reduced in their durational and spectral aspects. Vowel reduction in relation to word stress in English has been one of the challenges faced by Korean learners of English in learning English vowel system. In this study, we investigated effects of word stress on the vowel duration and vowel quality. This study focused on two unstressed vowels (/ə/ and /ɪ/) and three stressed vowels (/ʌ/, /ɪ/, and /i/). Words with five target vowels in the first syllable of word were collected from sentences produced by two subject groups. Vowel durations and first and second formant values were calculated and analyzed for the effect of stress which interplayed with intrinsic vowel duration and vowel quality. Study results indicated that speech data of Korean learners of English had much less magnitude in vowel shortening and reduction of vowel quality in unstressed vowels than those of English speakers. In addition, the five target vowels tended to be grouped into two in vowel space for Korean learners of English. Pedagogical implications of this study are discussed to improve learning and teaching English vowel system for Korean learners of English.

Investigating the Efficacy of Using Online Resources for Production Training in Learning Non-Native Vowel Contrasts

The current study investigates the benefits of virtual phonetic training on second language (L2) vowel production and examines whether production training improves perception. While the benefits of production instructions were investigated with instructions that were delivered by either a virtual or a face-to face teacher, a few studies investigated the benefits of online resources for second language (L2) learning with tutor audio instructions and feedback. Fifty-five Arabic speakers (21 served as a control group) took part in 3 one-to-one training sessions and were trained on producing seven Standard Southern British English (SSBE) vowels (/ ɪ, ɛ, ʌ, ɑː, ɔː, ɒ, ʊ/) that have been found to be difficult for Arabic learners of English. Improvements were assessed by their vowel identification, category discrimination accuracy and their vowel intelligibility. The results showed some improvements in vowel intelligibility and that vowel learning paved the way for improvement in perception, relative to the control group. The results indicate that using web-based tools along with audio instructions are beneficial for L2 learners and confirmed previous findings about the relationship between improvement in speech perception and production.

Dialectal differences in the Production of English Vowels by Iraqi EFL Learners at University Level

The present study investigates whether or not Iraqi EFL learners’ native dialect has an impact on their pronunciation of English monophthongs and to examine the reasons, behind the mispronunciation, they are expected to commit. To achieve this goal, sixty Iraqi participants speaking two Iraqi dialects i.e. qeltu and gilit dialect, were engaged to achieve a speech production task of the eleven English monophthongs in a /hvd/ context. The data were analyzed using PRAAT to extract first and second formant frequencies and as well as vowel duration for each vowel. Lobanov’s TELESUR G normalization algorithm (2006) was tracked to normalize F1 and F2 values. The normalized data were compared to results from Deterding (1997) and walls (1962). The results showed that Iraqi EFLLs produced the targeted vowels shorter than the control group represented by native English. In terms vowel quality, they produced lower and more fronted vowels than the control group. In addition, this study revealed that there are statistically significant cross-dialectal differences between gilit and qeltu-speaking EFLLs in the production English vowels. It is concluded that learners’ mother tongue has a role in their production of English vowels.

A Pedagogic-Phonetic Critique of the BBC’s Internet-Based L2 teaching of English Vowels

The present study proposes a pedagogic-phonetic critique of the BBC’s Internet-based L2 teaching of English vowels as a “pedagogic recontextualizing field (PRF)” (Bernstein, 1990). This PRF seems to purvey the learning input of English vocalic pronunciations in a way that manifests a set of pedagogic practices; such practices, despite being sensitive to text-based theories of phonetic description, are literally dismissive of essential pronunciation aspects that relate to lip position as well as vocalic duration and complexity. The research data is drawn from the BBC’s online video materials archived for the public use of L2 teachers and learners of English. Following Bernstein’s pedagogic-linguistic approach (Bernstein, 1971, 1975, 1990, 1996), the study has reached the main finding – alongside some pedagogic recommendations – that the BBC’s Internet-based L2 teaching of English vowels constitutes a partial PRF on the grounds that this type of L2 teaching offers only a limited pedagogic space for the recontextualization of “visible” pedagogic practices, and that there remain some phonetically significant aspects which are missing from the BBC’s PRF. Therefore, these aspects need to be incorporated into the pedagogic space available to the L2 learner or acquirer of English on the BBC learning website.

تحليل صوتي لأحرف العلة الإنجليزية في لفظ العراقيين من الذكور والاناث المتعلمين للغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية

A lot of studies showed that males and females vary in their production of English vowels as a result of biological variances in their vocal tract. These differences cause a challenge when they are employed for an instrumental analysis of speech sounds including male and female speakers. The primary aim of the present study is to provide experimental evidence for certain linguistic causes of production errors of English vowels spoken by Iraqi English foreign language learners at university level. It is a mixed mode research which concentrates on acoustic analysis and gender-related differences, as well as comparing native to non-native production of vowels. To achieve these aims, sixty Iraqi participants (30 males and 30 females) (selected by using purposive sampling method) who are university EFLLs were recruited to perform a speech production task of the eleven English vowels in a /hVd/ context embedded in a carrier sentence (say… again). The data were analyzed using Praat software to extract first and second formant frequencies and vowel duration for each vowel. Lobanov ANAE Method (2006) was followed to normalize F1 and F2 values. The data were compared to data from research projects (Wells,1992 and Deterdings, 2006) looking at the English vowels produced by native speakers. The collected data were statistically analyzed by implementing two processes of statistical analysis. The first process is the descriptive statistics, such as manual input of data and display them as bar charts that were done using Excel sheets. This was carried out to quantify the data obtained. The second process was inferential statistics, such as independent-sample t-test that was achieved using, SPSS software. It was conducted, to identify if the results reveal any statistical significance. The results showed that Iraqi EFLLs produced the targeted vowels shorter than native English speakers. In terms of vowel quality, they produced lower and more fronted vowels than the control group. In addition, this study revealed that there are statistically significant cross-gender differences between male and female Iraqi EFL learners in the production of English vowels. It is concluded that learners’ gender plays a considerable role in their production of English vowels.