Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
Home> Volumes> Volume CHR Vol.2> Article
Research Article

A Corpus-based Study on Speech Errors in Pronouncing the Fricative /θ/ by Chinese Learners of English

Xinyue GuoSchool of Foreign Languages, English Department, Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong, 266071, China*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract

There were quite a few studies investigating English pronunciation errors of Chinese learners of English. However, studies focusing on one typical sound and its detailed features are still inadequate. Besides, limited studies used speech corpora to investigate this topic due to a lack of available speech corpora. To fill such a research gap, this study uses the corpus L2-ARCTIC to investigate the speech errors of voiceless dental fricative /θ/ among four Chinese learners of English, and analyzes the possible reasons for the speech errors. Data are collected by analyzing the speech recordings from the corpus L2-ARCTIC, and the pronunciation errors of speakers are classified into different types. Results show that, in this corpus, the types of speech errors of the fricative /θ/ are the substitution and deletion. The sounds that have very close manners and places of articulation are easier to become the error sounds to replace the /θ/ sound.

Keywords: Speech Errors; Fricative /θ/; EFL; L2-ARCTIC Corpus
Published: February 28, 2023
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/2/2022544
Volume: CHR Vol.2
pp. 451-456
Download PDF

References

  1. Yiing, I. (2011). An analysis of pronunciation errors in English of six UTAR Chinese studies undergraduates. Faculty of Arts and Social science, Universiti Tunku.
  2. Rahman, M., Hasan, M.K. (2019) A study of voiceless inter-dental fricative [θ], [ð] sounds and alveolar liquid [r] sound among Chinese learners of English at a higher educational institution in Malaysia. Journal of Applied Studies in Language, 3(2):148-157. DOI:10.31940/jasl.v3i2.1470.
  3. Gao, L.L. (2005) Pronunciation difficulties analysis: a case study – using native language linguistics background to understand a Chinese English learner’s pronunciation problem. Celea Journal, 28(2), 76-84.
  4. Zhang, Y. (2009a) A Study of pronunciation problems of English learners in China. Asian Social Science.
  5. He, S.F. (2002) A contrastive analysis of Chinese and English. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.
  6. Chen, H., Sun, X.P., Zhang, Y. (2008) On English intonation instruction. Foreign Language Research, (2), 135-139.
  7. Yang, J. (2006) Intonation-phrasing in Chinese EFL learners’ English read speech. Modern Foreign Languages, (4), 409-417.
  8. McAuliffe, M., Socolof, M., Mihuc, S., Wagner, M., and Sonderegger, M. (2017) Montreal Forced Aligner: trainable text-speech alignment using Kaldi. in Interspeech, 498-502.
  9. Boersma, P.P.G. (2002) Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot international, vol. 5.
  10. Zhao, G., Sonsaat, S., Silpachai, A., Lucic, I., Chukharev-Hudilainen, E., Levis, J. and Gutierrez-Osuna, R. (2018) L2-ARCTIC: a non-native English speech corpus – PSI Lab. [online] Psi.engr.tamu.edu. Retrieved from https://psi.engr.tamu.edu/l2-arctic-corpus/.