This study is currently not recruiting participants.

[RL ZF SD YJL] Perception and Production of English and Chinese Monophthongs and Diphthongs

  • STATUS
    Not Recruiting
Updated on 19 February 2024

Summary

In this study, we will have Chinese learners of English, and a control group of native speakers of American English (AE) who are learning Chinese, pronounce words in a series of tasks with prompts that feature a number of target vowel sounds that are potentially confusable with /ai/. These pronunciations will later be played for a separate group of AE listeners to determine how intelligible the productions were. We will also have Chinese and AE speakers complete an Oddity discrimination task, where the participants listen to three words in a row and have to determine which, if any, of the vowel sounds were different. In this way, we can investigate which vowels are commonly confused with the diphthong /ai/ in perception, which vowels are commonly pronounced in ways that are not readily intelligible in production, and whether or not their difficulties in perception are related to their pronunciation of vowel sounds in English or Chinese. This challenges the notion that diphthongs and monophthongs represent separate learning problems for second language learners, and will help to inform how the vowel space progresses throughout the course of learning a language.

Description

In this study, we will have Chinese learners of English, and a control group of native speakers of American English (AE) who are learning Chinese, pronounce words in a series of tasks with prompts that feature a number of target vowel sounds that are potentially confusable with /ai/. These pronunciations will later be played for a separate group of AE listeners to determine how intelligible the productions were. We will also have Chinese and AE speakers complete an Oddity discrimination task, where the participants listen to three words in a row and have to determine which, if any, of the vowel sounds were different. In this way, we can investigate which vowels are commonly confused with the diphthong /ai/ in perception, which vowels are commonly pronounced in ways that are not readily intelligible in production, and whether or not their difficulties in perception are related to their pronunciation of vowel sounds in English or Chinese. This challenges the notion that diphthongs and monophthongs represent separate learning problems for second language learners, and will help to inform how the vowel space progresses throughout the course of learning a language.

Details
Condition healthy
Age 100years or below
Clinical Study IdentifierTX8493
Last Modified on19 February 2024

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