Chinese-to-English phonetic transfer of Chinese university EFL students

Fu, Z., Ji, C.-H., Weiss-Krumm, H., Wang, G. and Ma, Y. (2020) Chinese-to-English phonetic transfer of Chinese university EFL students. Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(1), pp. 18-31.

Abstract

Phonetic transfer is defined as an L1 influence on the acquisition of L2 phonetics. Previous studies have investigated phonetic transfer in the area of articulation, but the effects of L1 on L2 pronunciation measured by speech recognition technology have been under-researched. This study aims to address the issue by focusing on a sample of 676 Chinese university ESL students. Drawing on quantitative data, it examined whether the participants applied phonetic transfer to ESL learning and what factors might have influenced the results of phonetic transfer. We assumed that Chinese-to-English phonetic transfer occurs but that the extent of the transfer would be small because Chinese and English belong to different language families. However, findings from this study confirm that Chinese-to-English phonetic transfer occurs and the extent is large. The findings regarding high transferability might be attributed to spelling through phonics and the nature of pronunciation acquisition.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This research was supported by Scientific Research Projects of Tianjin Municipal Education Commission: “Research on the Training Strategy of Talents Internationalization in Agricultural Universities under the Context of Modern Urban Agriculture” (2018SK116).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Wang, Dr Geng
• Authors: Fu, Z., Ji, C.-H., Weiss-Krumm, H., Wang, G., and Ma, Y.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Journal Name: Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics
• Publisher: University of Hong Kong Centre for Applied English Studies
• ISSN: 2308-6262
• Published Online: 05 April 2020
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics 7(1): 18-31
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy