The Influence of Metalinguistic Knowledge of Segmental Phonology on the Production of English Vowels By Brazilian Undergraduate Students

Abstract: This article presents data on the production of English vowels [i ɪ ɛ æ u ʊ] by Brazilian English Language Teaching (ELT) undergraduate students before and after taking a course on English Segmental Phonology. Brazilian learners tend to assimilate the contrasts present in [i ɪ], [ɛ æ] and [u ʊ] into the prototypical categories of Brazilian Portuguese [i], [ɛ] and [u], respectively. Thus, this article investigates the influence of receiving explicit metalinguistic instruction of English segmental phonology on the production of the target pairs of vowels. The data analysis is of acoustic nature (spectral quality), and the results show that some learners created new phonetic categories for the English vowels after receiving the metalinguistic instruction.

摘要：本文呈现了巴西英语教学（English Language Teaching，ELT）专业本科生修读英语分段语音学（English Segmental Phonology）课程前后，产出英语元音[i ɪ ɛ æ u ʊ]的相关数据。巴西英语学习者往往会将[i ɪ]、[ɛ æ]与[u ʊ]三组英语语音对立，分别同化至巴西葡萄牙语的原型范畴[i]、[ɛ]与[u]中。据此，本文探究接受显性元语言教学（metalinguistic instruction）对英语目标元音对立组产出的影响。本数据分析采用声学分析方法，以频谱质量为核心分析维度，结果显示部分学习者在接受该教学后，为英语元音建立了全新的语音范畴。