Chinese EFL Learners' Acquisition of English Monophthongs-A Typological Study of Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Beijing

This paper analyzes Fuzhou (FZ), Ningbo (NB), and Beijing (BJ) EFL learners' acquisition of monophthongs with a typological method. Fuzhou, which belongs to Min dialect, is historically related to Wu dialect. NB is one of the representatives of Wu dialect. Beijing dialect is commonly admitted as standard Mandarin and without other dialect background, so that it is chosen to compare with Fuzhou and Ningbo. The mutual transfer of dialect and Mandarin is analyzed respectively. Results suggest that /alpha/ and /u/ of EFL learners are affected by dialects or Mandarin to some extent, coinciding with Speech Learning Model (SLM). Besides, /i/ is pronounced best by all EFL learners in that there is no prominent difference among dialects, Mandarin, and American English (AME), indicating that a positive transfer of dialect and Mandarin takes place. Moreover, for several monophthongs, although learners might have recognized the discrepancy between English and dialect/Mandarin, they still fail to produce these vowels well.