Abstract:

The paper focuses on comparing the pronunciation of British English vowels by native speakers and non-native English learners in Slovakia who study English as a foreign language. At schools and other educational institutions in Slovakia, standard British English serves as a model reproduced by Slovak learners. The technique we used and the results we concluded are of high importance because not much research has been done yet in Slovakia to evaluate and verify the pronunciation differences in this field. For meeting the research objective, we used a modern speech analysis application – the computer software programme called Praat. This application is still considered modern and innovative. Via a qualitative analysis of recordings presenting basic differences in the pronunciation of British English vowels from the articulatory and acoustic point of view, the accuracy of pronunciation is marked on a quadrilateral. The reason was to depict how similar or different the position of articulators is when Slovak learners imitate the correct pronunciation of British English monophthongs institutionalised in the standard British accent called Received Pronunciation. The software is used to recognise the formant values of vowel sounds, which allows furthermore the identification of tongue position during the pronunciation of British English vowels. The article analyses pronunciation and quality of acoustic characteristics of vowel sounds produced by selected Slovak learners of English with their B2 and C1 level in comparison to English native speakers.

Keywords:

Monophthong, vowel quadrilateral, tongue position, formants, complex periodic waves