Acquisition of English Vowels /ʌ/, / a/, / ə/ and /e/ by Azerbaijani EFL Learners: An acoustic account

Analyzing the acoustic properties of the sound system of any language can pave the way for further perception and production. This can help EFL learners enormously in that they become aware ofthe similarities and differences between their own native language and the target language. Thisstudy contrasted between the sound systems of Azerbaijani and English in order to detect potential areas of difficulty in the perception and production of four English vowels by Azerbaijani EFLlearners. In addition, the production of four English vowels by 30 Azerbaijani EFL learners wascompared to the production of 4 English native speakers from Australia. In this study, thedependent variables are F1, F2 and length while the independent variables include proficiency level, age and gender. The recorded data transferred to the computer for acoustic analysis of vowels by speech analysis software Praat. Two hypotheses, namely, Contrastive AnalysisHypothesis (CAH) as well as Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), and one model known as Flege’sSpeech Learning model are the highly debatable linguistic theories in this study upon which critical views are presented. For analyzing data, Independent samples T-test and One Way ANOVA were employed. The results indicated that there were significant differences among the participants interms of gender and proficiency level. Also, CAH was fully accepted while others were flatly rejected. The research findings can benefit language teachers and learners, stakeholders and material designers.

Keywords:

Acoustic phonetics , Azerbaijani vowels , English vowels