Mid-term
MA1C0207
錢芃聿
The Mid-term paper is to summarize the thesis (Tseng
Wan-chun’ s thesis). It will take you two weeks for this job.
Please write your summary and outline, according to the
following format;
1. Introduction
English has been a required course in high schools in
Taiwan for a long time. High school students tend to place
more emphasis on memorizing vocabulary, studying grammar,
and improving their reading and writing skills when they are
learning this target language. Speaking a language fluently but
without accurate pronunciation brings about hindrance to
communication. This shows how important a role
pronunciation plays in English teaching and learning. However,
it is essential to make students familiar with the functional
distinctions between different phonemes so that they can
develop their skill of precise pronunciation.
This thesis investigates Taiwanese senior high school
students’ performance in the perception and production of three
English non-high front vowels /e/, /ε/ and /æ/. They often
overlook the distinguishing features between their mother
tongues and the target language. The researcher has been
wondering what leads to the great difficulty in Taiwanese
students' pronunciation of English front vowels /e/, /ε/ and /æ/
The researcher use seventy-two males and thirty females,
from a senior high school in Tainan, Taiwan. They were the
students in two classes the researcher taught at school and were
all willing to participate in the experiments. The subjects show
more apparent problem pronouncing /e/. Acoustic computing
measurements are also examined and utilized to sort out the
scale of acceptance of the target vowels for native speakers.
2. Motivation
(a)
 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), marking the
beginning of a major paradigm shift within language
teaching in the twentieth century (Richards & Rodgers,
2001).

The monophthong /æ/ is classified as one short low
front vowel, yet low vowels are typically longer than other
vowels (Davenport & Hannahs, p.46, 1998; Ladefoged,
p.123, 2005).
 The sound of /æ/ is pronounced with the front of the mouth
more open (Bergmann, Hall & Ross, 2007).
(b)
The purpose of the study is to investigate Taiwanese senior high
school students’ performance in their production and perception
of the English front vowels /e/, /ε/ and /æ/.
3. Research questions
There are three research questions in this thesis.
(1) Can the subjects identify the three front vowels /e/, /ε/ and
/æ/?
(2) How is the subjects’ performance of their pronunciation of
/e/, /ε/ and /æ/?
(3) In what range is the subjects’ performance of production
intelligible for English native speakers?
4. Methodology
a. Subjects:
The researcher use seventy-two males and thirty females, from a
senior high school in Tainan, Taiwan. They were the students in
two classes the researcher taught at school and were all willing
to participate in the experiments. The subjects reported having
normal hearing and no history of speech disorder. All of them
were born in Taiwan, and almost none of them had any
experience studying in an English speaking country.
b. Instruments:
The current study includes such instruments as the General
Scholastic Ability Test, a questionnaire (Appendix A), a
perception experiment (Appendix B) and a production
experiment (Appendix C).
c. Basis for data analysis:
In the perception experiment, the numbers of the correct items
answered by the subjects were the scores they received. That is,
if the subject had only one correct item, the score reported
would be 1; if two, the score would be 2, and so on.
d. Criterion:
In order to strengthen the authenticity of the evaluation, the
English production was also analyzed by acoustic analysis. In
order to gain the acoustic measurements, a desktop computer
and a PRAAT program were the major aids during the process
of analysis. Then the Access database and Excel software were
used to store the acoustic data and to compute the mean values.
For each of the three target vowels, the length (L) and the first
two formants (F1 and F2) produced by each subject were
measured. Some previous related studies were referred to as
comparison.
After
the
man-evaluated
and
the
computer-processed analyses, the results obtained from the two
ways would be compared to induce in what range the subjects’
performance of each target vowel is intelligible for English
native speakers.
5. Findings
The purpose of this study is to explore Taiwanese high school
students’ performance in the perception and production of the
three non-high front vowels, /e/, /ε/ and /æ/ to observe and
analyze their mispronunciation and acoustic measurements in
vowel length, F1 and F2 from the data collected.
With regard to the subjects’ performance in perception, there are
five findings as the following:
(1) The three front vowels/e/, /ε/ and /æ/are challenging for
English learners in Taiwan to distinguish. Among them, /ε/
is the most difficult and/æ/ is the easiest one to perceive.
(2) The vowel /e/ in closed syllable with a voiceless consonant
is more difficult to perceive than that in the other
(3) The vowel /ε/ in closed syllable with a voiced consonant is
more difficult to perceive than that in the other two phonetic
environments.
(4) The vowel/æ/ in open syllable is more difficult to perceive
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.
6. Implications
There are five findings as the following:
(1) The three front vowels /e/, /ε/ and /æ/ are challenging for
English learners in Taiwan to distinguish. Among them,
/ε/ is the most difficult and /æ/ is the easiest one to
perceive.
(2) The vowel /e/ in closed syllable with a voiceless
consonant is more difficult to perceive than that in the
other two phonetic environments.
(3) The vowel /ε/ in closed syllable with a voiced consonant
is more difficult to perceive than that in the other two
phonetic environments.
(4) The vowel /æ/ in open syllable is more difficult to
perceive 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.
7. Your own responses
This study is hard to me, but when I finish reading this thesis, I
can learn more things from this thesis. For example, I have
known better about the three non-high front vowels, and the
three front vowels /e/, /ε/ and /æ/ are challenging for English
learners in Taiwan to distinguish. Among them, /ε/ is the most
difficult and /æ/ is the easiest one to perceive. Also many
non-native English speakers in Taiwan had problems perceiving
and producing these three front vowels. For examples from the
thesis, Jason, it is a very simple and common name in the West.
Nevertheless, the researcher hesitated when intending to say this
name, not knowing which one to choose from /'dʒesn/, /' dʒεsn /,
and /' dʒæsn /, and gradually found out many non-native
English speakers in Taiwan had problems perceiving and
producing these three front vowels.