This study primarily investigated the relative perceptual difficulty of four English vowels (/I/, /iy/, /ε/ and /ey/) for Taiwanese first-year university EFL students and the predictions of two L2 models (i.e. Flege's Speech Learning Model or the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis) in the acquisition of foreign language phonology. A total of 104 freshmen from a single university in northern Taiwan participated in this study. Their accuracy in recognizing the tested vowels was evaluated by a listening identification test developed by the researcher. After all the students' test scores were collected, a one-way ANOVA was administered to analyze the data. The statistical results of the study showed that the relative perceptual difficulty of the four vowels for the participants was /I/ ＞ /ε/ = /iy/ = /ey/ (＞ means more difficult than), and this finding did not support the predictions of either the SLM or the CAH.
關聯:
Hwa Kang English Journal ； 18 卷 1 期 (2012 / 04 / 01) ， P1 - 23
