Late Esl Learners’ Difficulties of Distinction between Lax and Tense Vowels

The present research is to analyze the production of English lax and tense vowels by early learners of English and late learners of English (namely, Early Bilinguals and Late Bilinguals). According to Flege, Munro, and McKay’s research in 1995, they discovered that Italian speakers who arrived in Canada late tended to have a noticeable foreign accent in English, whereas early Italian arrivals in Canada performed better at English pronunciation tasks. This suggests that older second language learners may have more difficulties in pronouncing native-like sounds in speech. Therefore, given that acoustic cues of vowels varied by the formant frequencies and perceived by speakers, it is likely to conclude that age of acquisition (AOA) might be the important factor that prohibits language learners to perceive, distinguish, and produce these formant frequencies correctly.