Attention, Perception, and Production of the English Voiceless Interdental Fricative by Chinese Learners of English

For most English learners, a foreign accent has always been a difficulty that they cannot easily overcome. Numerous research studies have examined the reasons for this issue, and have attempted to help learners produce spoken English close to native speakers, if not possible to completely eliminate foreign accents. Among the difficulties learners encounter in acquiring native-like second language (L2) pronunciation, the voiceless interdental fricative (i.e., [θ]) has been considered one of the most difficult sounds to acquire by most English learners. Many studies have identified various substitutions for [θ] in the speaking production of learners with different first language (L1) backgrounds. For example, Rau, Chang, and Tarone (2009) reported that Thai, Russian, and Hungarian learners of English tended to substitute [t] for [θ], while [θ] was usually replaced with [s] by speakers from Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and China (Lee & Cho, 2002; Rau et al., 2009). In order to explore possible causes of these problematic performances, one plausible way is to seek the relation between learners’ perception and production because it is generally believed that there is a positive correlation between a speaker’s perception and production; accordingly, improvement in one part will facilitate the development of the other. However, perception alone by no means determines production. Yang (1997) indicated that speakers’ attention, an important factor involved in one’s cognitive process of a speaking activity, also influences speaker’s perception and production. The following literature review introduces relevant theories and studies that have contributed to this research topic