Abstract:
To analyze and compare the ability in identifying English words with reduced vowel sounds using dictation task, and to analyze the relationship between the English language experience and the identification ability. The sample consists of 3 groups of speakers: 1) 10 native speakers of the English language 2) 30 Thai students with high English language experience. 3) 30 Thai students with low English language experience. The test words in this study contain 30 words with 3 reduced vowel sounds:[I] [<-->] และ [<-->II] in each group. It was found that the native speaker group could identify the words 98.33% correctly, 1.00% incorrectly, and 0.67% no answer. The high experience group could identify the words 62.56% correctly, 31.11% incorrectly, and 6.33% no answer. The low experience group had the lowest identification ability, they could identify the words 26.00% correctly, 47.22% incorrectly, and 26.78% no answer. Five major categories of the errors are: 1) Identifying the word correctly but incorrectly spelt; 2) Identifying the word as another word; 3) Identifying the word as another word and incorrectly spelt; 4) Identifying a non-word which is incorrect and meaningless; 5) No word identified. The native speakers had problems identifying the word in the first and second categories. The high experience group had problem identifying the word in all four categories but mostly in the second category. The low experience group had problem identifying the word in all four categories but mostly in the fifth categories. The test result showed that the English language experience was related to the identification ability of English words with vowel reduction. In addition, the identification ability depended on the linguistic knowledge, both of theoretical lexicon with embedded theoretical grammar, i.e., orthographical, phonological and semantic representation.