The Effects of Perceptual and/or Productive Training on the Perception and Production of English Vowels /ɪ/ and /i:/ by Cantonese ESL learners

This study investigated the effects of High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), a perception-only training, on Cantonese ESL learners’ production of English /ɪ/-/iː/ contrast in terms of the first and second formant frequencies as well as the vowel duration. A total of 17 subjects participated in this study and they were all trained over 20 sessions of the HVPT. The results showed that after training, the male learners could improve their production of the two vowels in terms of F1, F2 and vowel duration; the female subjects only improved in terms of F1 and vowel duration. This suggested that perceptual learning can be transferred to the production domain and the subjects could generally improve their productions in terms of both vowel height and vowel length. More individual variations were observed in the change of vowel frontness/backness. This study showed that after training, the awareness of the differences, particularly for the length, between the target vowel contrasts was raised.