本文实验分为两个部分:（1）中国学习者对英语辅音 /n/ /l/ /r/ 的知觉 同化实验；（2）中国学习者对英语辅音 /n/ /l/ /r/ 的产出实验。在知觉同化 实验中，参与者被要求去听 VCV 结构中去掉词尾辅音的英语刺激对。然后，他们 需要在 24 个汉语音符里找到类似或相同的音素，并判断其相似性。结果显示（1） 总体上，中国学习者能够区分这三组辅音，相对于英语辅音 /n/ /l/,受试者能 更好的感知英语辅音 /r/;（2）G1 的感知结果比 G2 好。在 G2 里，把英语辅音 /n/

/l/ 感知为多个汉语辅音。

在产出实验中，6 名中国学习者（分别从 G1 组和 G2 组中各选取 3 位）在语 音实验室里录制和 3 位英国外教相同的英语语料以及相关的汉语语料。他们的音 频用 PRAAT 软件进行标注和分析。结果显示，（1）中国学习者英语辅音/r/的 共振峰与外教的共振峰最为相似；（2）中国学习者的英语辅音 /n/ 的频谱峰值 比 /l/ 更接近外教组的频谱峰值。

通过此次实验能够帮助中国学习者了解到学习英语辅音 /n/ /l/ /r/ 的过 程，也为二语习得的研究提供数据参考。

关键词:辅音感知；辅音产出；英语辅音 /n/ /l/ /r/.

Chinese Learners' Perception and Production of English Consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/

I. Introduction

Since English served as a communicative tool frequently used in the International community, English has become a compulsory course for Chinese students in the university. Moreover, most Chinese learners have been learning English at primary school for 10 years. Nevertheless, they are still confronted with certain pronunciation difficulties. In the process of learning English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/, many Chinese learners can’t distinguish these three English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/, which makes learners fail to pronounce English words correctly with the initial consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/.

There have been an increasing number of studies on English pronunciation, particularly, on English consonants. A relative study was conducted by Dai Lei (2015), which investigated into the production of Chinese college students’ English consonants and found that the students were poor to distinguish some consonants though their majors were English .

So, this study tries to explore the perception and production of English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/, in order to help Chinese learners find better approaches to learning English better. To achieve this purpose, we decide to pide the whole experiment into perception and production experiments, and then find out whether the Chinese students’ pronunciation problems are caused by their sound perception or voice production by comparing and analyzing both the experiments on perception and production.

Hopefully,  this  study  would  help  us  to understand  the  process of learning English consonants /n/ /l/ and /r/ by Chinese learners. By analyzing their English consonants’ perception and production results and giving some reasonable advice, this study may  provide some experimental data for the second language study.

II. Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Models

2.1.1 PAM Model

Best (1988，1992，1994，1995) has established PAM theory through the study where after listening to non-native English speakers’ pronunciation, native English speakers found distinct differences. According to her researches, when we learn a language, there exists a feeling of phonetic stimulation. Besides, in PAM theory, she believes that the second language acquisition can be pided into three types according to learners’ perceptual response. The first type: Non-native language learners are able to absorb the native language. The second type: Non-native language learners can’t find the language sound counterparts in their mother tongue. That is, although the listener can hear the sound of the non-native language, he or she can’t find an appropriate native sound to replace it. The third type: Non-native language learners can’t perceive the sound of human voice. The first category can be pided into six minor types, the following four minor types of which can explain some  differences between two sounds of the L2 (second language). The first minor one is called “Two Category Assimilation”, which reveals that each contrasting non-native sounds can be assimilated to a different native sound. These two non-native language sounds are good exemplars that can be told from extremely easily. The second minor one --- “Category-Goodness Difference”: Both two non-native language speech sounds are assimilated to the same native language speech sounds, but one is deviant from the native sound, the other is closer to that in native sound.  Discrimination can be moderate to very good. “Single-Category Assimilation”,  as the third minor one, it shows that the two non-native language sounds are