An Analysis of Chinese Students’ Perception and Production of Paired English Fricatives: From an ELF Perspective*

English has assumed a new role in international communication in recent decades, that is, as a Lingua Franca (ELF) among speakers with different first languages. This study attempts to investigate and analyze Chinese university students’ perception and production of paired English fricatives from the perspective of ELF. By using a listening discrimination task and a reading task, respectively, the study examined how thirty two non-English major freshmen from a key university in Mainland China perceived and produced English fricative consonants. It was found that the participants had extreme difficulty distinguishing between the two sounds in three pairs of consonants in perception, namely, /ð-z/, /v-w/, and /θ-s/. In terms of production, the participants tended to replace the English fricative sounds, especially /ð/, /ʃ/, /v/, /Ʒ/, with various substitutes. These results indicate that Chinese students often have more difficulties with certain fricatives than with others. In addition, they seem to have particular problems with voiced fricatives. Therefore, it is suggested that priorities should be given to those that impede mutual intelligibility in international communication, namely, to those that fall into the Lingua Franca Core (LFC).