International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
investigated the tonal assignment in Cantonese loanwords from English, this study aimed at identifying the
dominant acoustic cues to English word stress produced by Cantonese ESL speakers, as well as the other less
dominant acoustic features for emphasis in the teaching of English word stress to Cantonese ESL speakers.
With observed phenomena of Cantonese tone assignment to English words in Cantonese-English bilinguals in
previous studies on Cantonese loanwords borrowed from English and those on Cantonese’s pronunciation of
English words, the research question and hypothesis were established as follows.
Research Questions
The proposed research aimed to answer the following research question:
Do Hong Kong Cantonese learners of English distinguish English word stress and non-stress simply with
higher F0 and lower F0 respectively?
Developed from the research question above, the hypothesis below is put forward:
There is a significant difference in F0 but not in intensity and duration between stressed and unstressed
English syllables produced by native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese.
Should the above hypothesis be proved, the reliance on F0 will establish a close link with L2 English word
stress production by native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese.
METHODS AND PROCEDURES
Twenty-two Cantonese ESL speakers (F = 11; M = 11), aged 18-24 years, were recruited. All were born in
Hong Kong and had lived in Hong Kong since birth. Among them, 11 were highly proficient (with a grade “C”
or above in HKALE UE or a grade “5” or above in HKDSE English Exam), and 11 were less proficient (with a
grade “E” or below in HKALE Use of English or a grade “3” or below in HKDSE English exam) (See Table 4
for the comparison among HKDSE, IELTS and HKALE results). All participants were recruited from within
Hong Kong Community College (HKCC), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) community. They
all had normal hearing, speech and language ability by self-report.
Table 4. Comparison among HKDSE, IELTS and HKALE results based on HKEA (2004, 2010)
HKDSE IELTS IELTS HKALE
5** 7.51 – 7.77 7.41 - 8.30 A
5* 7.16 – 7.32 6.92 - 7.40 B
5 6.81 – 6.99 6.51 - 6.91 C
4 6.31 – 6.51 6.03 - 6.50 D
3 5.48 – 5.68 5.40 - 6.02 E
2 4.79 – 5.07
Note. Such an equivalent between HKALE Use of English and HKDSE English is based on the research studies conducted by
Hong Kong Examination Authority (HKEA) in 2004 and 2010, comparing HKALE grades with IELTS scores and comparing
HKDSE scores with IELTS scores respectively.
Experiment Procedures
During the experiment, participants were asked to pronounce a set of English words in English contexts and
their corresponding Cantonese loanwords in Chinese contexts for comparison (see Table 5). This experiment
was used to test if native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese used the same phonetic cue(s), namely pitch,
intensity or duration, for the production of English syllables with different lexical stresses and Chinese syllables
with different tones.
Table 5. English words and their corresponding loanwords in contextualised English and Chinese sentences
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