Vowel Effects on L2 Perception of English Consonants by Advanced Learners of English

Vowel Effects on L2 Perception of English Consonants by Advanced Learners of English Yizhou Lan Shenzhen University 3688 Nanhai Avenue, Nanshan District, Shenzhen yzlan@szu.edu.cn Abstract A perceptual identification experiment has been designed to study the effects of vowel context in Mandarin speakers’ perceptual identification of L2 English fricatives and affricates. The identification task elicited the preferred Mandarin equivalent and a fitness rate of each of about 70 stimuli words with these English consonants from 67 Mandarin-speaking advanced learners of English (advanced EFL learners). The degree of mapping between Mandarin and English consonants, ranging from poor to fair, and good, were compared against predictions by the Perceptual Assimilation Model, a theoretic model that predicts learning outcomes by phonetic distances. Overall, the perceived phonetic distances between Mandarin and English consonants predicted the learners’ correct identification of the L2 consonants except for a few number of individual sounds, which showed enormous vowel variation. The variation of mapping patterns across vowel context data and individual sound results suggests that factors other than phonetic similarity, such as articulatory gestures should be accounted for in the prediction of L2 learning outcomes. The findings are discussed along the lines of gestural economy, present L2 speech learning models and pedagogical applications in EFL classrooms. 1 Introduction Pronunciation was once regarded as a “peripheral” and “unteachable” component in ESL/EFL teaching and learning, especially in the trending of “meaning-focused”, “communicative” context, which is an area of SLA research that lacks the marriage between theory and practice (Derwing, 2008). However, when communicating with native speakers, learners who fail to discern phonemes of meaningful significance may result in misinterpretation of the message from the interlocutor and thus end up with increased learner anxiety or lack of confidence. Therefore, L1 influences were often identified as sources of these cases. As effective aids to predict L2 sound acquisition issues under L1 influence, speech learning models such as Best (1995) and Flege (2003) respectively used the perceived L1-L2 distance as an indicator of learner performance. In the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), Best (1995) and Best & Tyler (2007) denote that three native to non-native assimilation types (TC, CG and SC) are discernible when a learner mentally compare two related incoming L2 categories with our native categorie(s) in storage. The L2 sounds may be assimilated to two different L1 sounds, which is the Two Category (TC) type, or to a single L1 category, the Single Category type (SC), or alternatively to a single native category with one being a better candidate than the other, the Category Goodness type (CG). PAM’s postulations also include predictions of levels of learners’ difficulties in comprehending L2 sounds. The easiest is the TC, then CG, and the hardest one being SC. On the other hand, SLM posits that speakers’ L1 and L2 sound systems interact and exist in a common phonological space (Flege, 2003). Whether new L2 phonetic categories are established or not depends on the perceived dissimilarities of an L2 sound from the closest L1 or L2 sounds. Learners’ ability …

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