本論文的研究重點主要針對在台灣多語社會環境中，母語是否造成大學生對英文捲舌音的發音困難及何種社會因素影響捲舌音的習得。本研究採用拉波夫（William Labov）的社會語言面談法（Labovian Paradigm），收集62位大學生的語音資料及問卷，並使用統計軟體「SPSS 11.5」進行量化分析。研究結果顯示，受訪者的國語捲舌音在不同的性別、父親族群及母親教育程度等社會因素下表現出顯著差異性，而其英語捲舌音則由於不同居住地區有顯著的差異。雖然不同族群受訪者在國語及英語捲舌音上的表現無顯著差異，但單就國語及英語捲舌音的表現而論，兩個語言之間的表現呈現顯著的正相關性。藉由本研究結果，無論是教育者或學習者，在發音習得時應多注意母語環境的影響，而教師及課程設計者也能針對不同社會背景的學習者因材施教，以達到更佳的學習效果。 This study is aimed at finding out if the difficulty in English retroflex acquisition is affected by source language and what social factors can influence retroflexion learning in the multi-lingual environments in Taiwan. By adopting Labovian Paradigm, 62 students from a university in northern Taiwan participated in our study. We adopted SPSS 11.5 in quantitative analysis with Independent Sample t-test, Pearson Product Correlation, and One-way ANOVA. The results indicate that there were significant differences in Mandarin retroflexion among different groups categorized by sex, fathers’ ethnic groups, mothers’ educational levels, and in English retroflex sounds according to different residency areas. We found that there were no significant differences in both Mandarin and English retroflex sounds between the groups of native and non-native speakers of Mandarin. Nevertheless, their linguistic performance in both languages still showed positive correlations significantly. From our study, special attention to social background of learners should be paid by educators, curriculum designers, and also learners themselves in pronunciation acquisition for having better performance.
