A Study of Taiwanese High School Students’
Production and Perception Performance in
English Non-High Front Vowels
Author: Wan-chun Tseng
Presenter: Shu-ling Hung (Sherry)
Advisor: Raung-fu Chung
Date: April 18, 2013
1
Chapter One Introduction
Background and Motivation



Due to CLT & GEPT, pronunciation is important to build
up communicative competence.
Take Jason for example.
English learners have problems with the production and
perception of /æ/ since Mandarin and Southern Min.
Mandarin: /ㄟ/, /ㄝ/-- /e/,/ɛ/ in English
Southern Min: /e/---/e/ & /ɛ/
2
Purpose of the Study




The study is to examine students’ production and
perception of the three front vowels.
Fledge (1993) points out that production follows from
perception.
Sheldon &Strange (1982) found that production
exceeded perception.
Taiwanese students, whose mother tongue is Southern
Min, will have a hard time differentiating the English
vowel /e/ and /æ/ due to transfer of L1 to Mandarin and
English.
3
Research Questions
Can the subjects identify the three front vowels
/e/, /ɛ/ and /æ/?
2. How is the subjects’ performance of their
pronunciation of /e/, /ɛ/ and /æ/?
3. In what range is the subjects’ performance of
production intelligible for English native
speakers?
1.
4
Significance of the Study

The acoustic data and the results of the study
can serve as a guide for English teachers in
Taiwan to refer to.
5
Limitations of the Study
1.
2.
3.
4.
The subjects are in the third grade from the same
school.
The subjects have the same English teacher.
There are uneven number of male and female subjects.
Because the vowels /ɛ, æ/ can not appear in a purely
open syllable as can /e/, the stimuli in the phonetic
environment of open syllables in the listening task had
to be designed equally in the first of the two syllables
as a comparison.
6
Chapter Two Literature Review
Contrastive Analysis (CA)

Lado (1957)
Comparing a language and culture to be learned
with the students’ native language and culture can
predict and describe in which areas language
learners will have difficulties.
 similar to L1 → easy
 different to L1 → difficult
 similar to L2, not the same position
→ difficult
7
Markedness

Eckman (1977)
 The Markedness Differential Hypothesis predicts the
difficulty of a L2 language learner based on the relative
degree of markedness of the native language and the
target language.
 Less marked phenomena are acquired before the more
marked.
8
Comparison of the Similar Vowels in
L1 and L2
9
Chapter Three Methodology
Subjects
Personal background
Sex
Male: 72; Female: 30
Mean age
17.32
birthplace
Taipei: 5
Chiayi: 7
Yilan:1
Hulian: 1
Mother language
Mandarin: 23
Southern Min: 17
English: 1
Mandarin + Southern Min: 60
Hakka: 1
Use of language at home
Mandarin: 3
Southern Min: 1
Mandarin + Southern Min: 92
Mandarin+Southern Min+English: 6
Taoyuan: 1
Tainan: 86
Kaohsiung: 1
10
English learning experience
Means years of learning English
before senior high school
5.52
Experience of going abroad
English-speaking countries (tour): 7
English-speaking countries (residence): 1
Non-English-speaking countries (tour): 32
Non-English-speaking countries (residence): 1
Never going abroad: 74
Familiarity with the KK phonetic
symbols
Yes: 85
Practicing speaking English after
school
Yes: 13 (with friends or family)
35 (by themselves)
No: 57
Source of English learning
Tapes or CD: 15
Radio instructional program: 95
Songs: 53
Church: 1
Going to a cram school
Yes: 19 No: 82 Tutor: 3
Average English scores for the
school term exams
80↑: 1
60↑: 12
40↑: 32
20↑:8
No:17
70↑: 5
50↑: 26
30↑: 17
10↑: 1
radio: 6
movie or TV: 45
video or game: 2
11
The Subjects’ mean scores of English on GSAT
Gender
Group
N
M
Male
HAE
39
11.28
LAE
33
7.36
HAE
22
11.82
LAE
8
8
Female
 The table shows that both males and females in HAE
performed much better than those in LAE.
12
Instruments (1)
Questionnaire
Part one: Personal background
Part two: English learning experiences

13
Instruments (2)
Two male English native speakers were invited to record utterances
as the speech stimuli for the perception experiment.
Three
categories
14
Instruments (3)
15
Procedure of Data Collection
16
Data Analysis
•
•
Perception
The program Excel VBA was adopted to produce and
S-P table, in which the researcher could examine
which sounds were easier to distinguish and which one
were the most difficult.
Production
(1) The two native speakers and one non-native
experienced English teachers were invited to listen
to the subjects’ recordings together as evaluators’.
(2) computer & PRAAT program
17
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
The Perception Experiment
RQ1: Can the subjects identify the three front vowels
/e/, /ɛ/ and /æ/?
18
FHAE>MLAE
MHAE ≒FLAE
19
20
The highest
21
With regard to the subjects’ performance
in perception
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
/ɛ/ is the most difficult and /æ/ is the easiest one to
perceive.
The vowel /e/ in closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant is more difficult to perceive.
The vowel /ɛ/ in closed syllable with a voiced
consonant is more difficult to perceive.
The vowel /æ/ in open syllable is more difficult to
perceive.
Those who did better on the written test of English –
GSAT- also performed better on the perception task of
English.
22
The Production Experiment
Evaluators’ Assessment
RQ2: How is the subjects’ performance of their
pronunciation of /e/, /ɛ/ and /æ/?

23
HAE has
less difficult
Less
successful
24
25
26
The highest error rates in the smallest task—the wordlist.
Tseng’s study: the average error rates of /e/ and /ɛ/ go higher as
the task gets larger.
27
With regard to the subjects’
performance in production
1.
2.
3.
4.
The vowel /e/ displays the most difficulty in the
subjects’ production and the success in pronouncing
/æ/.
The vowel /e/ in the closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant displays more errors.
The vowel /ɛ/ in the closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant displays more errors.
The vowel /æ/ in the closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant displays more errors.
28
General Intelligible Ranges of Production
for Natives
RQ3: In what range is the subjects’ performance of
production intelligible for English native speakers?
The range of
intelligibility in
vowel length is
wide because
the length
varies with the
speed of
production.
29
MLAE seemed to fossilize their tongue position more than the other groups
when pronouncing these three vowels, fixed to a more raised tongue height.
30
highest
lowest
Posterior
tongue
position
Anterior
tongue
position
The range intelligibility in tongue advance of /æ/ does not seem to
matter that much, but the tongue advancement of /e/ must be anterior to
that of /ɛ/.
31
With regard to the intelligible ranges of the
subjects’ production
1.
2.
3.
The length of the vowels /ɛ/ and /æ/ can be longer than
each other. The length of the vowel /e/ has to be the
longest of the three.
LAE’s performance of tongue height tended to stay raised,
MLAE in particular, fossilizing their tongue position more
when pronouncing the three vowels.
The tongue advancement of /æ/ does not matter much,
while the tongue advancement of /e/ must be anterior to
that of /ɛ/. MHAE tended to move tongue more forward
when pronouncing the three vowels. The female subjects
tended to keep their tongues farther back.
32
General Discussion (1/3)
The perception experiment
It was speculated in the chapter one that English learners
in Taiwan had problems with the production and
perception of /æ/. The result turned out opposite.
 Reasons:
1. The researcher teaches three vowels in class.
2. It is “new” sound for those whose first language is
Mandarin or Southern Min.
Taiwanese people used Southern Min /e/, so they
neglect the difference between the long, tense (/ㄟ/)
and the short (/ㄝ/) vowels in Mandarin. Their
production of English non-high front vowels thus lack
discrimination.

33
General Discussion (2/3)
The production experiment



The result is different from /ɛ/ the same phonetic
environment of the perception much.
The poor perception of it does not seem to affect its
production much.
The result of the four groups has a lot of devotion to
English learning. (e.g. fondness, time, cram school,
self-study)
34
General Discussion (3/3)
The evaluators’ assessment

The word list is examined by the native English
speakers with a higher standard of evaluation
because there was nothing else before and after
the single words to rely on perceiving what the
subjects were conveying.
35
Chapter Five Conclusion
Pedagogical Implications




Instructors have the duty to raise students’ awareness of
the sounds they hear.
Teachers must highlight that students the position of
their tongue.
Smaller scopes of production, the significance of
accurate articulation can not be ignored.
Precise and demanding instructions are important to lay
the firm groundwork for good command of English.
36
Suggestions for Further Study
1.
2.
3.
While selecting subjects, researchers should take
their language instructors into considerations.
The design of the list for the listening task is
important. It is better to set up the listening
experiment in a parallel way to the production
experiment.
It will be interesting to add /ɑ/ to the three in the
study.
37
Comments
If the researcher did not teach three front vowels before
doing the research, the result would be more precise.
 In the task of sentences and passages, native speakers
need to point out the errors that subjects made, but it
might be not correct enough.
 The rate of correct responses to the stimulus T-/bet/x2 is
higher than the other three. Likewise, the stimuli T/pled/x1 and V-/pled/x1 obtained higher rate of correct
response than T-/pled/x2 and V-/pled/x2. Additionally, the
rate of correct responses to the stimuli V-/dælɪ/x1, V/bæt/x1 and T-/plæd/x1are low in the categories. It is
doubted that the major factors to cause the prominent
differences. (p.19, 20, 21)

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