The relationship between the perception and production of four General British vowels by Slovene university students of English

This paper presents a study of the influence of orthography and phonemic transcription on the pronunciation of the four GB vowels /e/, /æ/, /ʌ/, and /ɜ:/ by Slovene university students of English. The paper also examines the relation between the perception and production of the four vowels in question by comparing the perception results of the same vowels from a previous study and the production results of this study. The results indicate a positive influence of phonemic transcription on the production of the examined vowels, whereas the influence of orthography on the pronunciation is confusing and leads to pronunciation errors. The results also confirm the findings of the perception study that the most difficult vowel contrast to maintain is between /e/ and /æ/. Interestingly, the perceived vocalic substitutes do not match the pronunciation substitutes for these two vowels. While the pronunciation of /e/ is excellent, its perception is still confused with /æ/