123 School Work

influence of native language in second language learning English speech production by native Cantonese speakers

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  Under the "biliteracy and trilingualism" education policy, children in Hong Kong have learnt English as their second language since they were three. Despite exposed to the English learning environment for a long time before they enter university, it is believed that our native language, Cantonese, would exert influence on our second language, English, thus language transfer exists. As Cantonese is different from English in various aspects, such as orthographic, phonology, syntax and so on, words with final consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ were examined even though they are commonly found in both Cantonese and English. Since they can be omitted in the pronunciation of Cantonese, they become the marked differences between the two languages. 25 undergraduates in HKU were studied. The results showed that native Cantonese speakers had longer reading time, greater error rate and more number of omission of the final consonants in the reading test than their native English counterparts.
  Under the "biliteracy and trilingualism" education policy, children in Hong Kong have learnt English as their second language since they were three. Despite exposed to the English learning environment for a long time before they enter university, it is believed that our native language, Cantonese, would exert influence on our second language, English, thus language transfer exists. As Cantonese is different from English in various aspects, such as orthographic, phonology, syntax and so on, words with final consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ were examined even though they are commonly found in both Cantonese and English. Since they can be omitted in the pronunciation of Cantonese, they become the marked differences between the two languages...