Phonetic realization of accent from Chinese English learners in various dialectal regions

The present study investigates the accent realization of English learners from Chinese dialectal regions, i.e., Beijing, Jinan, Zhenjiang and Hangzhou(hereinafter BJ, JN, ZhJ and HZ, respectively) within the frame of `Focus-to-Accent´ FTA theory. The words within the focus scope are designed to have different numbers of syllables and various word stress distributions. Results have demonstrated that English learners exhibit problems on accent realization, specifically, they cannot realize F₀ raising on the word stress and F₀ compression after the accented syllable. The production error becomes more obvious when the number of the syllables is increased. Among the learners of the four regions, they perform different magnitude of accent error, the BJ speakers show the highest level of accent realization and the JN speakers perform the worst prosodic features of accent realization.