A comparative study on accentuation implementation of Chinese EFL learners vs. American native speakers

Abstract

This paper investigates how Chinese EFL (English as foreign language) learners produce accentuation when speaking English. The study focuses on prosodic research of Chinese EFL Learners' English vs. native English through comparative evaluation of phonological pattern and accent related prosodic parameters. The research results show that the average length of intermediate phrases and intonational phrase is smaller in Chinese EFL learners' English than that in native English; the better the Chinese learner's English is, the closer the partition of intermediate/intonational phrases and the accent pattern are in his/her speech to those of native speakers; Chinese speakers tend to use pitch range amplification mechanism to realize accentuation rather than durational lengthening due to the negative language transfer from their native language, Chinese.