Phonetic convergence of Mandarin L2 English speakers towards Australian English

Speech convergence provides a good model on studying L2 accent change in a short-term conversation. The present study investigates Mandarin L2 English speakers accommodating towards an Australian speaker before and after a task-based conversation. Acoustic analysis and a perceptual AXB test on the vowels /ɐ:/, /æ/ and /o:/ were carried out to measure the convergence effect before and after the task. Both acoustic measurements and perceptual analysis showed that the Chinese participants only accommodated to Australian /ɐ:/, but not to /æ/ and /o:/. Results suggested that non-native English speakers were able to accommodate to native accent even only after 1 hour exposure. However, the convergence did not occur on the vowel which has the larger acoustic-phonetic distance between learners’ L1 and L2. Perception predicted by PAM could not fully explain the production change.