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Macau Periodical Index (澳門期刊論文索引)
- Author
- Lin, Hua；Smids-Dyk, Kassidy
- Title
- Japanese speakers' perception of English /ɹ/ and /l/ in different word positions
- Journal Name
- 澳門語言學刊
- Pub. Info
- December 2018, 總第52期, 第2期, pp. 93-100
- Keyword
- phoneme perception；second language speech acquisition；English /ɹ/and/l/；Japanese ESL learners
- Abstract
- This is an experimental study which examined native Japanese speakers' perception of English /ɹ/ and /l/ contrast. Different from many previous studies, the focus here was on word position. One of the goals was to verify that the final position induces better performance of the contrast's perception than the initial position. Seven female Japanese speakers and one female native English speaker were recruited for the study. The recruits did a two-alternative identification test which used real words with /ɹ/ and /l/ embedded in word-initial single-consonant onset, word-initial two-consonant cluster, word-medial single -consonant onset and word-final single-consonant coda. The results show that there is no single pattern for performance at these positions. Factors including the learners' proficiency level, phoneme type, and word membership need to be considered for better performance prediction. How acquisition theories such as Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH), Markedness and Speech Learning Model (SLM) fare in the prediction of the results are also discussed. Paragraph Headings： 1. Introduction 2. Experiment 2.1. Participants 2.2. Materials and recording 2.3. Perception test 3. Results 4. Discussion Tables： 1. Accuracy rates by group and position for all audio stimuli Figures： 1. Participants' accuracy rates 2. Accuracy rate by group 3. Accuracy rate by word position and group 4. Accuracy rate for /ɹ/ and /l/ by group 5. Accuracy rate for /ɹ/ and /l/ by word position