Pot 1 or Part 1? The R-Fulness among Taiwanese EFL Learners

台灣學生英語母音後之流音／r／發音問題研究

黃耀鋒(Yao-Feng Huang)

《大仁學報》 40期 (2012/03) Pp. 157-174

https://doi.org/10.29707/TJ.201203.0009

摘要

本研究探討台灣學生在英語母音後之流音／r／發音上的表現與母語及英語程度的關聯性。17位俄亥俄州立大學研究生及其眷屬朗讀並錄下一篇在字中及字尾含有母音後之／r／之短文。研究結果顯示，儘管台語無／r／，母語為台語的研究對象在字中母音後之／r／發音顯著優於母語為國語的研究對象，然而，在字尾母音後之／r／雙方表現無顯著差異；此外，母音後之／r／發音上的表現與英語程度的高低並無關聯性；整體而言，研究對象在字尾母音後之／r／發音顯著優於字中母音後之／r／。文末提供針對母音後之流音／r／在發音教學與英語教育政策上的建議，以及未來進一步研究的方向。

關鍵字

英語發音 ； 母音後之流音／r／ ； 英語教學 ； 第二語言習得

並列摘要

When studying r-fulness, many researchers (e.g. Decamp, 1972; Paolillo, 1995; Lee, 2006) assumed that all the Taiwanese participants in their studies are native speakers of Mandarin and did not take their actual first language into account. However, most Taiwanese speak Southern Min instead of Mandarin as a first language or are bilingual in both languages. Lee's (2006) and Paolillo's studies show that the final retroflection used in Mandarin does not guarantee the correct use of the /r/ in the word-final position within an English word. The scarcity of research in the literature addressing postvocalic /r/ in the medial position among Taiwanese EFL learners motivated this pilot study. The participants are 17 Taiwanese graduate students at a large mid-western university and some of their spouses with 7 speaking Mandarin and 10 Southern Min as a first language. They were asked to read a short English passage that the researcher wrote for this study without knowing the focus of the study was on r-fulness. The analyses of their recorded speeches show that the Southern Min group's medial r-fulness is significantly higher than that of the Mandarin group. However, there is no significant difference in the final r-fulness between the two groups. The low overall r-fulness of the Mandarin group contradicts Decamp's extrapolation that Mandarin speakers can transfer the retroflection of Mandarin and produce postvocalic /r/ without difficulty. On the other hand, it is consistent with the overwhelming tendency of deletion of postvocalic /r/ among Mandarin speakers in Paolillo's study. Moreover, the r-fulness of the Mandarin group in the final position corroborates previous studies in that the final retroflection in Mandarin does not guarantee the correct use of /r/ in the word-final position in English and there may be sociolinguistic variation. Pedagogical implications are proposed for EFL teachers and suggestions are made for policy makers.

並列關鍵字

SLA ； EFL ； English pronunciation ； r-fulness ； postvocalic /r/

參考文獻

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