| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 107 === In the current Taiwan context, EFL seventh graders learn the third person singular morpheme and eighth graders learn past tense morpheme. Meanwhile, the morphophonological rules of the third person singular and the past tense allomorphs are also taught to the students. Weng (2017) investigated the Taiwanese eighth graders’ speech production of third person singular allomorphs but did not cover the learners’ oral production of past tense allomorphs. Therefore, the present study intends to extend Weng’s (2017) study by examining eighth graders’ speech production of past tense allomorphs.
The participants in the present study included 226 Taiwanese EFL eighth graders from central Taiwan. They were given a morphological awareness (MA) test and a story-reading test. The eighth graders were then divided into a higher-proficiency group (N =149) and a lower-proficiency group (N = 77) based on the results of the MA test. To further compare the learners’ oral performance in past tense allomorphs, 60 EFL English majors were recruited as the control group.
The oral production of the past tense allomorphs was first investigated, followed by examination of the relationship between learners’ MA proficiency and their oral performance in the past tense allomorphs. Additionally, substitution errors for the past tense allomorphs were examined. Finally, 24 eighth graders, 12 participants in each proficiency group, were interviewed to explore their preferences for substitutions of the past tense allomorphs and the major factors affecting their substitutions strategies.
The results of the investigation showed that the ranking of the Taiwanese eighth graders’ oral production of the past tense allomorphs from best to worst, was [ɪd] > [d] > [t]. Furthermore, the participants’ oral production of the past tense allomorphs improves with their MA proficiency level. Regarding the higher- and lower-proficiency groups’ oral production of the past tense allomorphs, the higher achievers performed significantly better than the lower achievers at the [ɪd] and [t] allomorphs. However, both proficiency groups performed similarly well (51.7% vs. 59.7%) in the oral production of the [d] allomorph.
The results of the error analysis and the interview showed that to produce the [d] and [t] allomorphs, epenthesis was the most favored substitution strategy for the higher achievers. Omission was their primary strategy for the past tense [ɪd] allomorph in the error analysis. However, the result of the interview showed that there was no appropriate substitution for the past tense [ɪd] allomorph. Moreover, epenthesis was the lower achievers’ most preferred substitution strategy for the [d] allomorph. In addition, to produce the [t] and [ɪd] allomorphs, they tended to overproduce the [d] as their most preferred substitution strategy. For all three allomorphs, [t] substitution strategy was the least adopted by the eighth graders. Some factors have been identified to contribute to the results, including L1 transfer, the spelling of the past tense -ed as visual stimulus to the learners, and the format of the instrument used in the present study.
In view of these findings, the present study offers implications for English teaching that the morphophonological rules of the past tense need to be more emphasized. Teachers can model the past tense allomorphs and provide a prediction exercise for the pronunciation of the past tense -ed endings to the students (Celce-Murcia, Briton, & Goodwin, 1996). More practices and demonstrations of the past tense allomorphs should also be provided for Taiwanese EFL learners. Since the present study only focuses on the oral production of the past tense allomorphs, future studies are suggested to investigate the relationship between Taiwanese EFL learners’ perception and production of the past tense allomorphs.
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