Vowel Perception and Production in Native ki-Swahili Speaking Children Acquiring English as a Foreign Language

This study investigated the perception and production of English unrounded vowel minimal pairs /ɑ/ – /ɜ/; /æ/ – /ɑ/ and /i/ – /ɪ/, by a group of twenty native ki-Swahili speaking children averaging 9.9 years of age, who learned English through classroom instruction. The study was conducted in a typical foreign language acquisition (FLA) context. All the children participated in vowel perception and production tests. The findings revealed that the participants relied on their first language (L1) phonetic contrast knowledge when encoding vowel contrast. Moreover, factors that contributed to this problem of vowel contrast encoding included the size of the speakers’ vowel inventory, their limited exposure to spheres for interacting with the language outside the classroom environment and their social setting. Although the participants in this study demonstrated better ability in their vowel production than in their vowel perception, the results confirm those challenges that have been associated with FLA perceptual studies and how a young speaker’s first language significantly influences the child’s acquisition of English.