A Study of Taiwanese High School
Students' Production and
Perception Performance in
English Non-High Front Vowels
Graduate Student: Wan-chun Tseng
Advisor: Dr. Raung-fu Chung
Presenter: Hsin-Chiao Tien
Background and Motivation
Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT)
 Orally communicate
 General English Proficiency Test
 Pairs of tense-lax vowels often cause
frustration and confusion

Purpose of the Study

To investigate Taiwanese senior high
school students’ performance in their
production and perception of the English
front vowels /E//e//A/
Research Questions of the Study
1. Can the subjects identify the three front
vowels /E//e/and /A/?
 2. How is the subjects’ performance of
their pronunciation of / E /, /e/ and / A /?
 3. In what range is the subjects’
performance of production intelligible
for English native speakers?

Subjects



72 males and 30 females in the 3rd grade of
senior high school.
Mandarin and Southern Min are the languages
they use the most often in ordinary
conversation.
High achievement English learners (HAE):
English scores in GSAT were 10 and upward

Low achievement English learners (LAE):
English scores in GSAT were under 10
Instruments: Questionnaire

Part one: personal data
1)birthplaces
2)native tongues
3)the language they and their parents use most often
 Part two: English learning experience
1)the year of learning English
2)the acquisition of English before junior high school
3)the experience of going abroad
4)other extracurricular sources of learning English
5)the experience of learning K.K phonetic symbols and
going to a cram school
Instruments:
The Perception Experiment




Each of the two native speakers read and
recorded 9 sentences.
The total 18 sentences were then doubled as 36
files and organized in random order.
The 9 items were marked as A to I. There were
36 blanks for the subjects to fill in what they
heard from the listening process.
The K.K. phonetic symbols of the 9 items were
also shown.
Instruments:
The Production Experiment
Oral reading text: a word list with 20
single words, 5 sentences, and 1 short
passage
 Including / E ,e, A / in different phonetic
environments: open syllables, closed
syllables with a following voiced
consonant and voiceless consonant.

The Main Findings: Perception
1.The three front vowels are challenging for
English learners in Taiwan to distinguish,
/ E / in particular. / A / is the easiest one to perceive.


2.The vowel / e / in closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant is more difficult to be aware of than
that in the other two phonetic environments.

3. The vowel / E / in closed syllable with a voiced
consonant is more difficult to be aware of than
that in the other two phonetic environments.
The Main Findings: Perception

4. The vowel / A / in open syllable is more difficult
to be aware of than that in the other two
phonetic environments.

5. Those who did better on the written test of
English —GSAT— also performed better on the
perception task of English.
The Main Findings: Production

1. The vowel / e / displays the most difficulty
in the subjects’ production and the
greatest success in pronouncing /A/.

2. The vowel / e /
The vowel / e / in the closed syllable with a
voiceless consonant displays more errors.
The Main Findings: Production
3. The vowel / E /
The vowel / E / in the closed syllable with a
voiceless consonant displays more errors .

4. The vowel / A /
The vowel / A / in the closed syllable with a
voiceless consonant displays more errors.

The Main Findings: intelligible ranges

1.The ranges in vowel length appear wide.
The length of the vowel / E / and / A / can be
longer than each other, while that of / e /
has to be the longest of the three vowels.

2.LAE’s performance of tongue height
tended to stay raised, MLAE in particular,
fossilizing their tongue position more.
The Main Findings: intelligible ranges

3. The tongue advancement of / A / does not
matter much, while the tongue
advancement of / e / must be anterior to that
of / E /. MHAE tended to move their tongue
more forward and the female subjects
tended to keep their tongues farther
back.
Pedagogical Implications



While advancing learners’ listening skill,
instructors have the duty to raise their
awareness of the sounds they hear.
Learners should be taught to pull the lip
corners sideward and not to draw their jaws
downward too far for / e /.
Learners should be taught to draw their jaws
open and press the tongues down for / A /.
Pedagogical Implications



Precise articulation and correct grammar
knowledge are still essential for efficient
development of communicative skills.
Instructors of beginners are encouraged to put
in more time on drills to form good
pronunciation and sense of structures.
High school teachers must help students to
integrate all the language skills even though
there are only written tests for English in the
college entrance exams.
Suggestions for Further Study



Subjects’ language instructors should be taken
into consideration.
The listening task should be designed in a
parallel way to the reading list.
/a/ can be added to the target vowels to make
more comparisons.
THE END
Thank you for listening!