The Role of the Strong Version of the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis in Foreign Language Acquisition of Pronunciation
Dr. Maosheng Hung

Abstract
This study mainly investigated the predictions of the strong version of the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) on Taiwanese university EFL students’ acquisition of two English consonants (/s/ and /ɵ/) by examining the learners’ relative productive difficulty of the consonants. To reach the goal, a pronunciation test designed by the researcher was administered, and two research questions were formed. Fifty students from a private university in northern Taiwan were recruited to participate in this research. Their accuracy in pronouncing the tested consonants was rated via the self-designed production test. After all the participants’ test scores were collected, an independent-samples t test was conducted to analyse the data. The results showed that the relative productive difficulty of the two consonants for the students was /s/=/ɵ/. The finding suggested that the strong version of the CAH was found invalid in predicting the participants’ acquisition of the consonants in production.

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