A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Finnish children producing English vowels - Studying in an English immersion class affects vowel production




AuthorsKatja Immonen, Maija S. Peltola

PublisherAcademy Publication

Publication year2018

JournalJournal of Language Teaching and Research

Journal acronymJLTR

Article number4

Volume9

Issue1

First page 27

Last page33

Number of pages7

eISSN2053-0684

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0901.04(external)

Web address http://www.academypublication.com/issues/jltr/vol09/jltr0901.pdf(external)

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/27821434(external)


Abstract

The aim of this study
was to examine how earlier second language teaching affects Finnish school
children’s pronunciation of British English vowels. Two groups of Finnish
children between the ages of eleven and thirteen were tested. The early learners
studied in an English immersion class in a Finnish elementary school while the
control group attended a regular Finnish speaking class at the same school. The
task consisted of twenty three English stimulus words which included the twelve
monophthong English target vowels in voiced and voiceless environments. The
words were repeated seven times during the task. The participants produced the
words after a native model and the target vowel qualities were then
acoustically analysed. Statistical analysis revealed a group main effect. More
specifically the analysis showed that the groups differed significantly in the
way they produced target vowel second formant (F2) values. The F2 difference
was only significant in the voiced context. Closer examination of the groups’
vowel qualities revealed that the control group tended to produce the F2 values
higher than the early learner group in most of the target vowels. The higher F2
values can be an indication of more frontal tongue position or less lip
rounding during vowel production.


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