Attention, perception, and production of the English voiceless interdental fricative by Chinese learners of English.

摘要

This study investigated the relations among speaking styles, Chinese ESL learners' attention to the voiceless interdental fricative ([&thgr;]) sound, the learners' perception of English native speaker's speech, learners' self-perception, and the learners' production. Thirty-four Chinese ESL learners participated in three production tasks and two perception tasks. A stimulated recall, questionnaire, and interview were also conducted. The results of both quantitative and qualitative studies showed that a) the production accuracy of [&thgr;], and the amount of attention paid to it, were positively related to the difficulties of the speech styles; b) the more demanding the speech style was and the less salient the word position was, the less attention was paid to the production of [&thgr;] and the less accurately it was produced; c) the participants produced [&thgr;] better than they perceived it; d) the participants' NS-perception was better than their self-perception.