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Introduction
Many non-native learners of English have struggled to produce English tense and lax vowel contrasts. In the previous article, the experiment evaluated the perception of English tense and lax vowel contrasts with different durations in Chinese learners of English and this paper examined how the participants produced the English tense and lax vowels as judged by native English speakers. This study was designed to discuss the following question:
How do Chinese learners of English perform in the production of English tense and lax vowels /i/-/?/ and /u/-/?/as judged by the native English speakers?
Literature Review
An increasing number of researchers have drawn their attention to vowel distinctions with various factors accounted for the perception and production of language pronunciation (Flege, 2003; Escudero, 2006; Romero and Rallo Fabra 2012), in particular, many studies have been conducted on the production in second language acquisition (Lee et al., 2006; Flege et al., 2001; Yang, 2011), which facilitate better understanding of L2 learners’ production problems on their language development. Other studies have employed auditory and visual stimuli to demonstrate linguistic phenomena (Hardison, 2003; Hincks, 2003). Furthermore, a large number of studies have investigated consonant acquisition, particularly, the English /r/-/l/ distinction by Japanese speakers (Aoyama et al., 2004; Iverson and Hattori, 2009; Pisoni et al., 1997).
On the whole, English tense and lax vowels are not easy for non-native speakers to produce. That is why more research was needed to explore whether Chinese learners of English could correctly produce tense and lax vowels and whether the results of their perception patterns in my previous study were correlated with the results of their production patterns.
Production Study Experiment
In my previous article, the perception experiment aimed to evaluate whether Chinese learners of English could perceive the tense and lax vowels when those vowels were manipulated into different durations. However, this did not distinguish whether the perceptual results were related to the production of English tense and lax vowels on Chinese learners of English. It was expected that good perception might guarantee good production. Therefore, the researcher hypothesized that their performance on perception of tense and lax vowels might highly correlate with their production of those vowels. Methods
Participants. Three Chinese learners of English who participated in the perception experiment also participated in this experiment as speakers.
Data collection. All the recordings were made in the soundproof booth using the software Pratt (Boersma
Many non-native learners of English have struggled to produce English tense and lax vowel contrasts. In the previous article, the experiment evaluated the perception of English tense and lax vowel contrasts with different durations in Chinese learners of English and this paper examined how the participants produced the English tense and lax vowels as judged by native English speakers. This study was designed to discuss the following question:
How do Chinese learners of English perform in the production of English tense and lax vowels /i/-/?/ and /u/-/?/as judged by the native English speakers?
Literature Review
An increasing number of researchers have drawn their attention to vowel distinctions with various factors accounted for the perception and production of language pronunciation (Flege, 2003; Escudero, 2006; Romero and Rallo Fabra 2012), in particular, many studies have been conducted on the production in second language acquisition (Lee et al., 2006; Flege et al., 2001; Yang, 2011), which facilitate better understanding of L2 learners’ production problems on their language development. Other studies have employed auditory and visual stimuli to demonstrate linguistic phenomena (Hardison, 2003; Hincks, 2003). Furthermore, a large number of studies have investigated consonant acquisition, particularly, the English /r/-/l/ distinction by Japanese speakers (Aoyama et al., 2004; Iverson and Hattori, 2009; Pisoni et al., 1997).
On the whole, English tense and lax vowels are not easy for non-native speakers to produce. That is why more research was needed to explore whether Chinese learners of English could correctly produce tense and lax vowels and whether the results of their perception patterns in my previous study were correlated with the results of their production patterns.
Production Study Experiment
In my previous article, the perception experiment aimed to evaluate whether Chinese learners of English could perceive the tense and lax vowels when those vowels were manipulated into different durations. However, this did not distinguish whether the perceptual results were related to the production of English tense and lax vowels on Chinese learners of English. It was expected that good perception might guarantee good production. Therefore, the researcher hypothesized that their performance on perception of tense and lax vowels might highly correlate with their production of those vowels. Methods
Participants. Three Chinese learners of English who participated in the perception experiment also participated in this experiment as speakers.
Data collection. All the recordings were made in the soundproof booth using the software Pratt (Boersma