英语论文网

4.1 The Quantitative Results of Problematic Initial Consonant Clusters
From Figure 4.2, it can be seen that the main distribution of both male and female participantsmaintains the same as Figure 4.1，but some changes still take place in some aspects. Firstly,there are more male non-perceptions of initial consonant clusters /tr/ and /kr/ than those offemale participants' in Figure 4.1 but in Figure 4.2，the number of male initial consonantcluster /tr/ is larger than that of female participants' and the number of male initial consonantcluster /kr/ is the same to that of female participants'. Secondly, the discrepancy betweenmale and female participants becomes smaller in Figure 4.2 except for the initial consonantcluster /pr/, especially the initial consonant clusters such as /gr/，/fr/ and /dr/.

…………

Conclusion

From the experiment and analysis, it can be concluded that Hangzhou EFL learners havesome protruding problems in acquiring English initial consonant clusters. Of the seven maintwo-element initial consonant clusters ending with /r/ phone，/fr/ and /dr/ have relatively lowpercentages of correct acquisition and /pr/ and /br/，on the contrary, have relatively highpercentages of correct acquisition. In each group of initial consonant clusters，especially in thegroup of /tr/ and /dr/ and the group of /kr/ and /gr/，the initial consonant cluster beginningwith a voiced consonant is acquired better than the voiceless one. Compared with theacquisition of /tr/, Hangzhou EFL learners' acquisition of /dr/ is not proficient as that of /tr/since /dr/ is often pronounced as /CI3/.The reason for this phenomenon lies in the influence of Hangzhou dialect. The fact thatthere is no /「/ phone in Hangzhou dialect phonology stops Hangzhou EFL learners fromacquiring initial consonant clusters accurately. Therefore, the similar phone /1/ is often used inthe place of /「/. But it does not always happen that /r/ is pronounced wrongly as /1/，but onlywhen the phones tightly behind /r/ are /u/，/0(:)/ and /i(:)/ it happens since the combinationsof these sounds with “1” are what Hangzhou EFL learners are most familiar with. What's more，because of the principle of least effort, Hangzhou EFL learners tend to articulate these clustersby the way they are familiar with.
……………
Reference (omitted)