L2 learners’ pronunciation of English phonetic sounds

Pronouncing English sounds correctly is not an easy task for second language (L2) learners because of the influence of their mother tongue. Empirical studies, based on first language (L1) interference, have investigated L2 learners’ pronunciation problems. However, these studies rarely focused on students’ development in pronunciation, and their results lack validity and reliability because of their mere employment of L2 English teachers as pronunciation assessors. The present study, using the acoustic software Praat as the instrument and taking a native speaker as the comparison, investigated Chinese L2 English learners’ problems and improvement in pronouncing the English sounds that do not have exact counterparts in Chinese. Data analysis revealed that the participants manifested different degrees of pronunciation accuracy with the target English sounds; their mispronunciations of consonants were mainly due to lacking voicing, wrong manners, and wrong places of articulation, while their mispronunciations of vowels were attributed to their improper tongue position, mouth opening, and diphthongization; and that higher-proficiency students tended to have greater pronunciation accuracy. The findings were discussed with reference to the literature, and pedagogical implications were provided at the end.