Perception of English Monophthongs by Native Speakers of Mandarin

This study explores the perception of English monophthongs by native speakers of Mandarin (hereafter NSMs). The data were collected at the phonetics laboratory at Jiangsu University of Science and Technology (hereafter JUST), China. The results reveal that the overall percentage of correct vowel perception is 81.2%, that the phonetic contexts affect the subjects’ vowel perception, and that the best perceived monophthongs are /uː/, /ɑː/, /iː/ and /ɪ/, while the worst perceived ones are /æ, /ʌ/ and /ɒ/. These findings have implications for the teaching of EFL phonetics to NSMs in China.

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