English Vowels in Taiwanese college EFL Learners

Raung-fu ChungSouthern Taiwan Universityrfchung@mail.stut.edu.tw

May 10, Renmin U

Outline of the talk

1. Introduction

2. English as a second or a foreign language?

3. Vowels and vowel acquisition

4. Related theories: MDH and SLM

5. Cases

6. Concluding remarks

1. Introduction

a. English as a second or a foreign language in Taiwan?

b. English, as a matter of fact, as a third or a fourth language in Taiwan

(i) L1 = native language = Southern Min

(ii) L2 = lingua franca = Mandarin Chinese

(iii) L3 = foreign language = English

Findings:

Let us examine the elementary school students in the beginning.

Elementary students’ English vowels:

Elementary student’s Mandarin vowels

Elementary school students’s average of 3 languages:

40103English Mandarin S. M.

VowelsF1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2

457 2849 380 2711 426 2439

565 2563 650 2423 544 1959

ǝ 733 1041 803 1400 685 1494

846 1523 868 1718 879 1491

o 630 1087 592 916 707 1221

434 1396 469 1006 446 865

An examination fo the data:

Summary:a. [i] is more like that of Mandarin

b. [a] is higher, much like that of Mandarin

c. [u] is between Mandarin and Southern Min, also showin the impact of Mandarin

d. [e] is exactly a reduplicate of the Mandarin [e]

e. [o] is higher, quite different from the [o]s in Mandarin and Southern Min

2. College students

• Subject: 30 college students & 3 native speakers

• Age of college students: they are 19-20 years old, and they are sophomores

• Age of native speakers: they are 27, 28 and 36 years old respectively

2. College students’ vowels:

College student’s vowel chart:

College students: [i][u] and[a]

Summary:

a. [i]: much like that of Mandarin, while it is different from those of English, SM

b. [u]: much like that of Mandarin, somewhat different from those of English, and SM

c. [a]: also like that of Mandarin

Mid vowels: [e] and [o]The mid vowels [e] and [o] are quite

intriguing in that they are distributed in a far apart space for each language. However, college learner’s [e] and [o] are also more like those of Mandarin.

This is not surprising for English and Mandarin share the same backness assimilation constraint, while SM does not allow vowels with the same backness:

This is not surprising for English and Mandarin share the same backness assimilation constraint, while SM does not allow vowels with the same backness:

English, Mandarin, Southern in backness

Concluding remarks:1. Both studies, based on English vowels of

elementary and college EFL learners, indicate that Taiwanese learn or acquire English on the basis of Mandarin, although SM is indeed their first language.

2. The results further confirm the role of backness constraints.

Implications

1. Theoretical implication

CAH (Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis)

SLM (Speech Learning Model)

MDH (Markedness Differential Hypothesis)

Pedagogical Implications

1. Positive transfer:

2. Sound identification and drill practice

3. How far can Communicative go?

Remaining issues:1. Vowel category correspondence

Egnlish [] vs. Mandarin [ ㄟ ]

English [e] vs. Mandarin [ ㄟ ]both being: [ey]

Thank you for your attention

Comments are welcome!