Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation of English Final Consonants Alice Y.W. Chan Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong This paper discusses Cantonese ESL leamers’ pronunciation of English final singleton consonants. Twelve learners at the intermediate and advanced levels participated in a recent research study, which included four different tasks: the reading of a word list of about 150 words, the description of about 100 pictures, the reading of three passages of about 250-350 words each, and a conversational interview. Words consisting of all the English permissible final singleton consonants in different preceding vowel environ- ments were used for probing into the learners’ interphonology. The participants’ per- formance in each task was recorded and transcribed independently by two raters. ‘The results of the study showed that the participants had most problems with the voicing contrasts of final obsttuents. Other problems included the non-release of final plosives and the inaccurate articulation of certain fricatives and sonorant conso- nants, especially the lateral /l/, The preceding vowel environments of nasals and lateral were also found to be significant in determining the learners’ acquisition of the segments concerned. It is suggested that ESL teachers should be aware of the sources of their students’ problems as well as the relative gravity of the problems if they are to help their students overcome the problems effectively. doi: 10 2167 lec321 0 Keywords: second language acquisition, interphonology, English final singleton consonants, obstruents, sonorant consonants Introduction Itis well known that learners often encounter difficulties in learning a second language, ranging from the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the target language to its morphology and phonology. Studies on learner difficulties have often focused on the errors that learners make in their acquisition process, because it is thought that their errors give important evidence that they are in the process of acquiring the language and indicate their knowledge of the language (Corder, 1981). Research into second language phonology acquisition has also attempted to investigate the difficulties or errors that lear~ ners encounter when they produce a second language and /or the strategies that they use to overcome their difficulties so as to uncover their language learning process. Various areas of second language phonology acquisition have been focused on, and learners of different linguistic backgrounds have been involved. Outside of Hong Kong, Carlisle (1991) investigated the acquisition of English consonant clusters by 14 Spanish ESL learners in two studies and found that vowel epenthesis was often used by the learners to overcome their problems with English onset clusters especially when the onsets occurred (0790-8318 /06/03 296-18 $20 00/0 1 2006. A YW Chan LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM Vol 19, No 3, 2005 2%Canionese ESL Leamers’ Pronunciation 297 after consonants. Edge (1991) examined the production of word-final voiced obstruents in English by Japanese and Cantonese speakers and found that devoicing was significant for both Japanese and Cantonese learners of English although Japanese learners approximated target variants more often Within the context of Hong Kong, Peng and Setter (2000) scrutinised the reduction of alveolar plosives by two Cantonese speakers. Their study provides evidence of a systematic morphophonemic alternation in the English of Cantonese ESL learners, confirming, that this process is a linguistic feature of the English of Li Cantonese speakers Stibbard (2004) studied the co-occurring segmental errors made by Cantonese ESL learners using connected speech data and concluded that Hong Kong English pronunciation should not be viewed as phonological in its own right. Instead, all the features identified should be regarded learner errors Not only have segmental problems been explored in the literature, but supra- segmental problems have also been the focus of interphonology research Focuising on single-stressed words, double-stressed words, and unstressed syl- lables, Aziz (1980) investigated laqis’ problems with English stress patterns Kim and Kim (2001) looked into the general intonation patterns of Korean leamers of English speaking English declarative sentences. Results of these research studies also point to the fact that ESL learners encounter various diffi- culties in learning the phonetics and phonology of a second language, regard- less of whether segmental or supra-segmental aspects are at issue One of the most comprehensive surveys of English pronunciation problems encountered by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong is probably Chan and Li (2000), who give a detailed account of the problems these learners encounter in the production of both isolated English words and English connected speech. Among the difficulties documented are devoicing of final obstruents (eg devoicing of /2/ in the word rose), deletion of consonants in consonant clus- ters (eg. deletion of /r/ in the word produce), and substitution of a non-target sound for a target sound {eg substitution of [w] for /r/ in the word Fred). Suprasegmentally, it is argued that English stress and hythm also pose tremen- dous problems for Cantonese ESI. learners, such that all the syllables in an English word or phrase are pronounced with equal stress occupying more or less the same amount of time, thereby resulting in a syllable-timed rhythm. (For example, the phrase International Airport, which should be pronounced with the underlined syllables stressed and the rest unstressed, is pronounced with all the syllables given the same amount of stress ) Though comprehensive enough, the problems documented are largely based on the authors’ observations corroborated by a substantial body of earlier findings (Chan & Li, 2000). No rigorous empirical data was specifically gathered to support their claims Tn an attempt to provide (partial) empirical data for Chan and Li's (2000) findings, a research study was carried out by the author of the present paper to investigate the pronunciation of English final singleton consonants by inter- mediate and advanced Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Singleton conso- nants, rather than consonant clusters, were chosen for experimentation because the number of fice variables in articulation could be restricted. Final conso- nants, rather than initial consonants, were chosen because there are significant differences between the inventory and articulation of permissible final298 Language, Culture and Curriculum consonants in English and in Cantonese: whereas there are 20 final consonants in Received Pronunciation (RP) English (all the English RP consonants except /h, t, j, W/). only six consonants are allowed in syllable-final position in Cantonese, namely voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ and nasals /m, n, n/ (Chan & Li, 2000). The articulation of final plosives in English is also different from that of final plosives in Cantonese. Whereas English final plosives are normally released, final plosives in Cantonese are obligatorily unreleased. This means that for the voiceless bilabial /p/, the lips remain closed; for the voiceless alveolar /t/, the tongue tip clings to the alveolar sidge; and for the voiceless velar /k/, the back of the tongue touches the velum and remains there without air being released (Chan & Li, 2000). Such differences in the inventory and articulation of permissible final consonants in the two languages are illuminating and may have an effect on Cantonese learners’ acquisition of English pronunciation. Methodology An intensive research study was conducted with six F. 4 and F.5 secondary school students (including five form 4 students and one form 5 students) and six year 1 and year 2 university students (including one year 1 student and five year 2 students in Hong Kong? They have been learning English as a second language since they were four or five The university students were all English majors and had taken a course of English phonetics and phonology lasting for 13 weeks) in their first year of university study. The secondary students, on the other hand, had not received any phonetics training before A control group comprising three native speakers of English was also invited to participate in the study to provide baseline data. The participants (and the Native English speakers (NEs)) were asked to perform four different tasks, which included (1) the reading of a word list of about 150 words, (2) the description of about 100 pictures depicting different objects, actions o1 scenes, (3) the reading of three passages of about 250-350 words each, and (4) a conversational interview of about 10-15 minutes Words consisting of all the English permissible final singleton consonants in different preceding vowel environments were used for probing into the learners’ interlanguage phonology. In order to facilitate the proceedings of the reading tasks, only simple mono- or bi-syllabic words containing the target sounds were included For the word-reading task, the participants were asked to read the list of iso- lated words one by one. For the picture description task, the participants were asked to produce a particular word which was appropriate fo the content of each of the pictures. Cues eliciting the appropriate response were given where necessary. For the passage reading task, the texts were selected specifically for the study to elicit words with the final consonants under inves- tigation For the conversational interview task, each subject was interviewed individually for the elicitation of spontaneous speech. He/she was given some topics of personal experience, such as their hobbies, their friends and family, or their pets, and asked to select one topic for a 15-minute discussion The participants’ performance in each task was recorded using a high-quality mini-disk recorder: To ensure reliability, the researcher adopted both inter-rater and intra-rater judgments. The recordings were manually transcribed by twoCantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 299 transcribers, who had received formal training in linguistics and phonetics and who attended a series of coaching sessions conducted by the researcher to ensure accuracy and consistency. Their results were compared and the discre- pancies in their judgement were resolved. RP was taken as the norm in the accuracy judgment process as this accent is the one most widely taught in local schools. All the documented features rel- evant to the accurate articulation of the target sounds, including the manner of articulation, the place of articulation, and the state of the glottis (ie. voiced or voiceless) (cf Roach, 2000), were taken into account, but the participants’ performance in irrelevant areas, such as their pronunciation of the vowels which preceded the target consonants or their pronunciation of initial conso- nants, were ignored. Although two groups of leamers at two different profi- ciency levels were included, no attempt was made to compare and contrast their performance The inclusion of two different groups of learners for the study was decided on in the hope of yielding results which would be deemed more representative of the spoken output of Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Findings and Discussion The results of the study revealed that the participants showed different performance on different categories of sounds Following Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) distinctive features system, the consonant sounds under investi- gation have been classified into obstruents and sonorant consonants. Because ail English sonorant consonants are voiced in final position, but English obstru- ents can be voiced or voiceless, the following discussion will broadly be divided into voiced obstruents (ie. /b, d, g, v, z, 3, 9, d3/), voiceless obstruents (ie /p, tk, £8, J, 8 tf/) and sonorant consonants (/1, m, n, n/). The subcate- gories (e.g, plosives vs fricatives and afiricates; lateral vs nasals) within each category Will also be examined independently where appropriate, Given that the research was an intensive study of the speech behaviow of a selected group of learners rather than a cross-sectional study of a large group of parti pants, the results will be discussed with reference to the tokens of sounds pro- duced rather than to the sample of participants involved Voiced obstruents ‘The most serious problem that the participants encountered in their pronun- ciation of English final singleton consonants was the voicing contrasts of voiced obstitents, especially fricatives and affricate. Virtually no participant in the study pronounced any of the voiced obstruents with voicing irrespective of speech styles and the preceding vowel environments that the segments were in: a tolal of only about 0.1% of the voiced obstruents cued or attempted (3658 tokens) were voiced (see Table 1) If speech styles were taken into account, the results were no different: 0.2% and 0.5% of the total number of voiced obstruents cued in the picture description task (204 tokens) and word reading task (528 tokens) were voiced, and 0% of the total number of voiced obstruents in the passage reading task (1335 tokens) and interview task (1591 tokens) were voiced. This difference was minimal and did not reveal any300 Language, Culture and Curriculum Table 1 The participants’ overall performance on the different categories of sounds Categories/sub-categories | Total number of tokens | Percentages of correct cued or attempted tokens produced Voiced abstiuents 3658 tokens O1% Voiced plosives: 7133 tokens - | Voiced fricatives 2367 tokens Voiced affricate 158 tokens Voiceless obstruents| 4645 tokens Veiceless plosives 2914 tokens Voiceless fricatives 1421 tokens | 939% Voiceless affiicate 310 tokens | 987% [Sonorant consonants (6036 tokens 78.2% Lateral 1153 tokens 98% Nasals 4903 tokens 942% | significant difference between the par ticipants’ performance in different speech tasks (see Table 2 for a detailed analysis of individuals’ performance on frica- tives and affricate) ‘As is documented in the literature, devoicing of final obstruents is a very common phenomenon encountered by many ESL learners whose native language does not show voicing contrasts (e.g. Eckman, 1981; Edge, 1991; Major & Faudree, 1996) (see also the Terminal Devoicing Rule, in Eckman, 1981) The same phenomenon was found in the interlanguages of my par pants, whose mother tongue is Cantonese, a language which does not have voiced obstruents in its phonemic inventory Ithas been observed that even native speakers do not voice final obstruents occasionally. Instead of actualising the voicing contrast between, for example, /p/ and /b/, in words such as rope /raup/ and robe /ravb/, native speakers of English often shorten the preceding vowel in rope, distinguishing the two words by means of vowel length rather than final voicing Devoicing of final voiced obstruents was also found among the control group of the present stuidy, but to much lesser extent than the Cantonese participants. Only a total of about 22% of final voiced obstruents were devoiced, and in consonance With previous observations, devoicing was typically accompanied by a lengthening of the preceding vowel This compensation strategy was, however, not found in this study sample of Cantonese ESL learners. Because devoicing alone without a corresponding change in the vowel length was pre- dominantly used for coping with final voiced obstruents, these voiced conso- nants (such as the fricatives /v, z, 0, 3/ and the affricate /d3/) became indistinguishable from their voiceless counterparts. The participants’ inability to actualise the systematic contrast between voiced and voiceless obstruents, thus, resulted in their use of a substitution strategy, replacing a difficult sound with its corresponding ‘easier’, voiceless counterpart (Chan & Li, 2000) The participants’ production of voiced plosives was more complicated. Most final plosives were not released (see section ‘Voiceless Obstruents' below), soCantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 301 Table 2 Percentages of devoicing of final fricatives and affricate by the participants Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total (%) (%) (%) Co) (i) Devoicing of final voiced fricatives SI [_100 100 100 100 100 saith 100 100 100 __100 100 3 100 100 100 100 100 s 100 100 100 100 100 5 100 100 100 100 100 36 100 100 100 100 cae 100 io | 989 992 38 100 00 | 100 100 9 100 100 100 100 S10 100 100 100 100 sm 067 100 100 4 siz 100 100 100 100 ‘Average 72 100 998 99 Devoicing of final voiced affricate 100 100 No data No data 100 100 100 No data 100 100 100 100 | _Nodata No data 100 100 100 No data No data 100 100 100 No data 100 100 100 100 Nodata_| _Nodata 100 100 100 No data 100 100 [100 100 | _Nodata 100 100 100 100 No data 100 300 it 100 No data 100 a7 100 100 Nodata | 100 100 100 100 No data 100 100 “991 | 100 No data 100 94 ing, Was not a predominant feature, yet for those consonants which were indeed released, practically all the instances, except 0 1%, were devoiced (see Table 1) Voiceless obstruents Without the voicing requirement, voiceless obstruents did not pose as much difficulty for the participants in the study as voiced obstruents, resulting in an overall accuracy rate of about 72%. The participants’ performance on this302 Language, Culture and Curriculum category of sound was, however, not consistent when the different sub- categories ~ plosives vs fricatives and affricate ~ were taken into account Plosives The participants’ performance on (voiceless) plosives was significantly poorer than their performance on (voiceless) fricatives and affricate. Only about 53.5% of the total number of final voiceless plosives cued or attempted Q914 tokens) were produced without modifications (see Table 1), and the major modification made was non-1elease. Non-1elease of word-final voiceless plosives was most serious for the conversation task, but the majority of partici- pants also exhibited such a feature in their production of voiceless plosives in other formal tasks such as word list reading and picture list reading (see Table 3) ‘Asstated in Gimson and Ramsaran (1989), the production of English plosives is characterised by three phases: the closing phase when the articulators move together to form an obstiuction, the old phase when air is compressed, and the release phase when the articulators move apart to allow air to escape. All these phases are obligatory when a plosive is in initial position Final singleton plosives in words in isolation are also normally released? On the other hand, Cantonese final plosives are obligatorily unreleased (Chan & Li, 2000). This articulatory difference between the plosives of the two languages may help explain the participants’ performance: they may have tansferred their usual habit of not releasing final plosives to their pronunciation of English plosives, resulting in a low accuracy rate Non-release of final plosives was also common among the control group, but typically limited to the passage reading task and the interview task. Unlike the Table 3 Percentages of non-release of voiceless plosives produced by the participants Percentages of non-release of voiceless plosives Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total (|) CH) () (%) 207 370 447 660 529 310 a4 18 25 805 38 333 600 529 478 207 592 671 839 oi 207 296 588 892 638 72 | 2359 2A 536 356 mai | 48a 706 "847 682 00 37 Re 5 462 103 | 00 at 495 276 oo | 00 424 625 425 207 74 oi2 | 703 571 2a 481 553 S77 523 170 281 529 O97 535.Cantonese ESL Leamers' Pronunciation 303 Cantonese patticipants, non-release of final plosives in isolated words in the word list and picture list reading tasks was relatively rarer for the NEs. Only about 9% of the word-final voiceless plosives in these two tasks were unreleased. Fri catives and affricate Unlike voiceless plosives, voiceless fricatives and affricate as a whole were not found to be very difficult for the participants of the study. About 93.9% of the total number of voiceless fricatives cued or attempted (1421 tokens) and about 987% of the total number of voiceless affricates cued or attempted (310 tokens) were correctly produced by the participants (see Table 1 for a general picture and Table 4 for the performance of individual participants on different tasks). The only exception was the dental fricative /9/: Only about 14.2% of the total number of tokens cued or attempted (273 tokens) were accu- rately pronounced Most of the incorrect pronunciations were substitution by [f1, so words such as smooth or clash were often mispronounced as [smu] or [kof]. Contrary to what is documented in the literature (e.g. Chan & Li, 2000; Lee, 1976), /J/ and /t{/, which are non-existent in Cantonese, did not pose much difficulty for the participants of the present study. The accuracy rates were 95 4% and 97 7% respectively, which paralleled the results of other voice- less fricatives that are often regarded as ‘easy’, namely /s/ and /t/. The dental fricative /0/ seems to be the most difficult voiceless fricative for Cantonese learners of English. Although it has been claimed that the sound is difficult to pronounce only when it is in a consonant cluster (Gimson & Ramsaran, 1989), our research results showed that the sound was difficult to the participants even when it was the only consonant in the syllable coda Because the sound is non-existent in Cantonese (and is actually rarely found in the world’s languages (Maddieson, 1984), a lack of similar equivalents in the learners’ mother tongue or their linguistic repertoire may have been the major cause of the problem. This is not the whole pictuse, though, given that {J/ and /t{/ are also non-existent in the Cantonese phonemic inventory but they were not found to be very difficult for the participants. Another possible reason for the incomparable high inaccuracy rate for /9/, thus, may be the small articulatory and perceptual differences between the sound and its most popular’ substitute /f/: both /f/ and /8/ are voiceless fricatives, the former being labio-dental and the latter being dental. For non-native English speakers such as Cantonese, the visual distinction between the two places of articulation is not easily observable. The perceptual difference between the two sounds is not easily clistinguishable by ear either, given that these learners often work through the phonological filter of their first language which does not have such a distinction. Although no documented evidence for Cantonese ESL lear- ners’ perceived differences between /£/ and /0/ could be presented, the author, who has been a university English teacher for over 14 years, has received numer- ous complaints from her students about their difficulties in distinguishing the two sounds perceptually. The small perceived differences between the two sounds may help to expiain why /0/ was the most difficult English voice- less fricative for the participants of the present study.304 Language, Culture and Curriculum Table 4 Percentages of modifications made to voiceless affricate anc| fricatives by the participants Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total | () ca) (%) %) (%) Percentages of modifications made to voiceless affricate SL 00 00 286 20 30 00 00 “00 31 34 8 00 00 00 00 00 st 00 00 00 00 00 $5 oo | 00 oo oo oo $6 00 00 00 00 00 | 00 oo {| 00 “00 00 38 00 00 00 oo 00 9 00 167 00 00 38 S10 oo oo | 00 00 00 Sil 0 00 00 00 00 512 00 00 00 00 00 Average 00 i [| 24 i iB Percentages of modifications made to voiceless fricatives 7 1 56 oo | 00 “a 14 2 oo 00 00 00 00 3 00 a 68 00 8 st 00 oo 00 00 00 $5 56 oo | 00 00 86 M1 ODEs | eee ee Pree? 279 7 [90 00 23 86 37 $8 56 91 24 15 29 39 56 182 8 ns 7 S10 _56 oo | ag _00 58 sii “22 oo | 47 86 85 S12 56 182 23 32 u Average 56 a5 34 93 a It may be argued that the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /{/ is also articu- latorily very similar to its closest ‘neighbour’, the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, with only slight differences in the place of articulation. This is not true, because there exists a clearly-observable visual distinction between the articulation of /{/ and that of /s/, namely the rounding of lips for the former. Such a visual distinction does not exist for /8/ and /f/. Although lip shape may be heavily influenced by the phonological environment (such as neighbouring, vowels), for non-native speakers of English whose first language does not contain /{/, the visual distinction between the fwo consonants may serve as a useful aid‘Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 305 fot acquisition. The perceptual difference between /{/ and /s/ also seems to be greater than that between /f/ and /8/. Without careful research into Cantonese ESL learners’ perception of English pronunciation, it is hard to discern the effects of perception on production, yet the above speculations may plausibly explain the unexpected results (unexpected because /[/ and /tj/ were not found to be difficult) of the study. Sonorant consonants The participants’ performance on the category of sonorant consonants was interesting, in the sense that some sonorant consonants (eg. the lateral /I/) were found to be significantly more difficult than others (eg. nasals): whereas the lateral /1/ was the most difficult English final consonant next to voiced obstruents, nasals were the easiest group of English final consonants Lateral As is well known, in RP English there exist at least two allophones for the English lateral /1/, clear [I] before vowels and dark [1] after vowels. According to Abercrombie (1967), the articulation of clear I] requires a secondary articu- lation of the raising of the front of the tongue in addition to the primary articu- lation that is characteristic of an alveolar lateral. The articulation of dark [#], on the other han, requires a secondary articulation of the raising of the back of the tongue in addition to the primary articulation. Given that the focus of the present stucly was on final consonants, the target pronunciation for the laterals, cued was dark [1]. The resulls of the present study showed that only 9.8% of the total number of tokens of /1/ cued or attempted in the four tasks (1153 tokens) were accurately pronounced by the participants in the study (see Figure 1 and Table 5) Their performance was, however, not uniform. A detailed environ- mental analysis revealed that a preceding round, back vowel (e.g. /u:/ as in cool, />:/ as in tall) or a diphthong ending with a round, back vowel (eg /ou/ as in whole) triggered the least number of accurate articulations and a pre- ceding close, front vowel (e.g, /t/ asin kill) triggered the most number of accu- rate articulations (see Figure 1) The most common strategies that they used to tackle words containing this problematic sound were either total omission of the sound or vocalisation (substitution by [u) Total omission was typically found in words consisting of a round, back vowel (the context where dark (4] ‘was least accurately produced), whereas vocalisation was typically found in other contexts, including a preceding close, front vowel (the context where the sound was most accurately produced). Although both Cantonese and English have an alveolar lateral /l/, the distri- bution of the consonant in the two languages differs: /1/ is found only in initial position in Cantonese but in both initial and final positions in English, e.g low /lou/ and dull /dal/ As mentioned earlier, correct articulation of dark [#] requires a secondary articulation of the raising of the back of the tongue concur- rently with the primary articulation of the tip of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge and air escaping through the sides of the tongue (Abercrombie, 1967; Gimson & Ramsaran, 1989). This articulatory characteristic may explain why the participants’ production of the sound was the worst in the contexts of a pre- ceding round, back vowel such as /u:/ or /2:/: Because the secondary articulation306 Language, Culture and Curriculum Ja 15.9% & four tov fev lo:! ssomoeiioa Jo safiauaaiad g g z =f e to s 23 2g EE & § owe g a BS g (Ree st 3 3 g & peeeeeeeeeUEREUEUIIEE S RRR RRNA 3S Eg “ g 5 RRR - 4 2 ag S REET g & g = aCantonese ESL Leamers’ Pronunciation 307 Table 5 Percentages of modifications made to the different sonorant consonants by the participants Percentages of morifications made to sonorant consonants T%) i (%) 1%) 9%) Si 983 00 104 2 970 00 135 33 1000 10 120 125 st 978 102 96 130 55 938 10 13, 56 101 1000 91 7 1000 00 87 $8 08 oust 19 9 933 10 59 38 510 593 00 17 00 si 966 a4 34 a siz m7, a7 4 Average 902 64 85 addls ‘a vowel-like timbre to the consonant’ (Brown, 1989), the co-existence of the consonant and a preceding round, back vowel may have been regarded by the participants as equivalent (see ‘Equivalence Classification’ in Flege, 1987) (both the vocalic element and the consonantal element requiring the raising of the back of the tongue) and produced as if they were one single sound with the dark [4] absorbed by the vowel, resulting in total omission of the consonant. ‘The dissimilarity between dark [}] and a preceding close, front vowel such as /;/, on the other hand, may have triggered more careful articulation of the con- sonantal element The higher accuracy rate notwithstanding, it is evident from my results that the secondary articulation of dark [#] may have been perceived by the participants as equivalent to an [ul] sound, giving rise toa widespread sub- stitution by {u]. What made dark [H] difficult to the participants was, thus, the co- aticulation requirement of the raising of the back of the tongue coupled with alveolar contact and lateral release, rather than the secondary articulation alone, which was apparently achieved by the production of [u]* Nasals Unlike their performance on /1/, the participants’ performance on nasals was good on the whole, with an accuracy rate of 94.2% (see Table 1) (ranging from the lowest accuracy rate of 91.5% for /g/ to the highest of 97.6% for /m/). The preceding vowel environments of nasals also seemed to have played a part in the participants’ acquisition of the sounds: a central vowel (e.g. /3:/) triggered the least number of accurate productions for /m/, a preceding diphthong (e g jor/, [ar/) triggered the least number of accurate productions for /n/, and a front vowel (eg, /:e/) triggered the least number of accurate productions for /n/ (see Figure 2°) In most other contexts, the participants’ performance was308 Language, Culture and Curriculum & & é 2 a z 8 a 30 betetece 3 & 2s g BES 2 5 ee ce 3 8 oe - E g 2 & Bg a. = g 5, y é ssaunaion oso aing ao 3 2 &Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 309 close to 100% accuracy. The core problem involved was deletion of the sounds, and for the case of /n/, deletion and/or substitution by (n] Cantonese learners’ tendency to delete a final /n/ after diphthongs has been documented in the literature (Bolton & Kwok, 1990; Chan & Li, 2000). This deletion phenomenon can again be attributed to mother tongue interference, because none of the Cantonese final nasals /m, n, n/ can be preceded by diphthongs (Bauer & Benedict, 1997; Chan & Li, 2000). In encountering English words like line with a diphthong preceding a final nasal, Cantonese speakers may have the tendency to delete the nasal as if the word had an open syllable like the canonical syllable structure that Cantonese diphthongs are allowed in. It is, however, unclear to the author why the same phenomenon of deletion did not occur so frequently when /n/ was preceded by other diphthongs such as /au/, nor was deletion found to be widespread when the nasal /m/ was preceded by a diphthong. The influence of the preceding vocalic element seemed to be rather idiosyncratic Further research is thus needed to uncover the effects of preceding vowel environments on learners’ acquisition of final nasals® (see Table 5 for a detailed analysis of the partici pants’ performance on nasals) Implications for Language Teachers As can be seen from the above discussions, native language interference is definitely one of the determining factors affecting Cantonese ESL learners’ pro- duction of English final consonants The devoicing of voiced obstruents, the non-release of final plosives, and the deletion of /n/ after a diphthong can all be attributed to mother tongue influence Other factors, such as the effects of preceding vowel environments on final nasals and the similarity between a replacement sound and the target sound (as for the case of /1/) may also play a significant role It may be argued that some of the problems discussed in this article are not categorically non-standard, given that native speakers of English, RP speakers inclusive, do not voice final obstruents, do not audibly release final plosives, or voealise /1/ occasionally (especially in casual speech). However, these speaking habits should not be overlooked in the ESL learning arena. Because a lot of ESL. learners consistently do NOT speak in conformity with the native norm despite their strong desire to speak ‘good’ English, we can safely conclude that the pro- blems discussed in this article are the results of their incompetence in produ- cing accurate English pronunciations rather than their occasional slips of the tongue or their deliberate attempts to imitate native speaking habits The acceptability of an ESL learner's pronunciation is dependent, to a large extent, on the speech styles he/she is engaged in and on the receptiveness of the listener What might be acceptable in an informal, casual conversational style may not be acceptable in a formal, careful reading style In contexts where com- munication of ideas is emphasised and/or where meanings can be inferred without the need for correct pronunciations, such as in casual conversations, phenomena such as non-release of final plosives ot devoicing of final abstru- ents will not normally be regarded as distracting or annoying On the other hand, in contexts where language accuracy is considered essential (eg. the310 Language, Culture and Curriculum careful reaciing ofa formal text) or when correct pronunciations are needed for the differentiation of words (eg, minimal pairs), the same non-native accent will be deemed unacceptable and affect the listener’s understanding as well as his or her impression of the speaker's English proficiency. Vocalisation of final /I/ is a good example. When used in conjunction with other features of the Cantonese accent, an {ul-like final lateral can sound unsophisticated and may be gravely stigmatised In view of the possible adverse effects of faulty pronunciation, it is important that students be made aware of the need for correct pronunciation to improve language accuracy and to avoid confusion. ESL teachers should determine the relative degree of gravity of their students’ pronunciation problems and design appropriate materials for remedial instruction. Mispronunciations which may cause communication breakdown should of course be given prior attention, but those which definitely show the learners’ inadequate mastery of the norm or which clearly demonsirate non-nativeness, irrespective of thei possible effects on communication, should also be skilfully tackled Limitations Despite some insightful findings, the present study suffers from certain limit- ations. One limitation concerns the sample size. Given that the research was an intensive study of participants’ speech behaviour in different speech contexts, only six secondary students and six university students were involved. Such a small number of participants may not be representative enough to warrant any reliable conclusions regarding Cantonese ESL learners’ acquisition of English final singleton consonants, yet the large pool of data collected (3658 tokens of voiced obstruents, 4645 tokens of voiceless obstruents, and 6056 tokens of sonorant consonants) may help mitigate the small sample size. The consistency of the findings with those obtained from previous relevant studies (e.g. Bolton & Kwok, 1990; Chan & Li, 2000) also shows that the small number of partici- pants is immaterial to the validity of the results Another limitation concerns the scope of the study Only one aspect of pho- nological learning, namely the learning of English final singleton consonants, was focused on, so no comprehensive conchusions regarding second language phonology acquisition by Cantonese ESL learners could be drawn Given that English allows a maximum of three consonants in initial position and four con- sonants in final position but no consonant clusters are allowed in Cantonese, Cantonese learners’ acquisition of English consonant clusters is also worth examining, It is unknown from the results of the study whether, say, the co- existence of fricatives and plosives, or the co-existence of nasals and fricatives, trigger similar problems for Cantonese ESL learners as final singleton conso- nants. Other areas which deserve investigations include learners’ learning of vowels ~ monophthongs and diphthongs, and suprasegmentals. Further inves- tigations are needed to obtain a full picture of the English pronunciation problems encountered by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong, Conclusion In this paper, have reported on the results of a research study which inves- ligated the acquisition of English final singleton consonants by 12 CantoneseCantonese ESL Leainers’ Pronunciation aul ESL learners in Hong Kong The results of the study are mostly in harmony with earlier claims about Cantonese ESL learners’ pronunciation problems, and they have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. On the theoretical side, they not only provide new empirical support for earlier claims about English pronunciation problems encountered by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers (e.g. Chan & Li, 2000), but also put forward an argument that the preceding vowel environment of a segment may be a determining factor for the pronunciation of English final singleton consonants, especially of lateral and nasals. The determining role of mother tongue interference is also verified On the pedagogical side, the findings provide ESL teachers with insights into the goal and priority of pronunciation teaching, With a heightened awareness of the sources of students’ pronunciation difficulties and the nature of the pro- biems, ESL teachers can design remedial materials that are suitable for their students’ needs. Given that not all English final consonants are equally difficult for Cantonese ESL learners or equally distracting for listeners, teachers can set up a system of teaching priorities based on the relative gravity of the problems and schedule remedial teaching accordingly. As the scope of the study was only on Cantonese leamers’ acquisition of English final singleton consonants, a number of problematic areas in Cantonese ESL learners’ acquisition of English pronunciation have not been addressed. Further research is needed to investigate their learning of other seg- mental and suprasegmental aspects, to ascertain the effects of preceding vowel environments, and fo uncover the strategies that they use to overcome other pronunciation problems In view of the possible effects that perception may have on production, learners’ perceptual abilities, as well as the relationship between their perceptual abilities and production abilities, are also worth investigating. Given the small number of participants, there is no attempt on the author’s part to claim comprehensiveness or generalisability. Instead, it is hoped that the findings will shed light on the relative gravity of learner diffi culty and inform ESL teachers of the goals of pronunciation teaching. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the participants who participated in this study, as well as my research assistants, Jim Lo, Hang Chan and Carmen Kong, for their administrative assistance. This study was supported by City University of Hong Kong (Strategic Research Grant No. 7001320) The support of the univer- sity is acknowledged Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Alice Y W. Chan, Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong (enalice@cityu.edu hk) Notes 1 The liquil /1/ is not allowed word-finally in RP English except for linking purposes, but it is allowed in some other accents of English, such as American English and Scottish English312 Language, Culture and Curriculum 2 F 4 students in Hong Kong are comparable to grade 10 students in the US, and F 5 students to giade I1 students 3 Ina consonant cluster, some plosives may not be audibly released eg In the word scripls /sktipts/, the /t/ may not be audibly released 4. Hung (2000), using spectrograph analysis, found that a velar glide [w] was used by his participants to replace dark [4] Because {u} rather than {w} was perceived by the transcribers in their analysis of the data of the present study (using aural discrimi- nation by ear), it was decided that the former be opted for Given that the articula- tion of [3] is very similar to [u] (Roach, 2000), the divergent analysis will not affect the reliability of my results (see also Bolton & Kwok (1990) for their analysis of sub- stitution for datk [1)) 5. 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