South Korean Students Chinese Tones Acquisition Research

The study is concentrated on the Chinese tone acquisition of Korean students who are proficient with Chinese. The investigation has been operated with means of experimental phonetics. The data collected has been analyzed in a statistic way. Also, the acoustic data of Korean students is compared with the Chinese native speakers’.The study can be divided into three parts:1. Single Tone Acquisition:It is the part emphasized on the single tone data analysis. It is found that the Tone2(Yangping) and Tone3(Shangsheng) are the most difficult tones for Korean students. The tone pitch showed comparative low in Tone2articulation. This error may lead a misunderstanding with Tone3. Additionally, the duration of each tone of Korean students is a little longer than native speakers.2. Disyllabic Tone Acquisition: This section is intended to further observe the situation of the Korean students learned Chinese tones of the disyllabic word. The amount of errors the Korean students made in the word group increased significantly than the single syllable. Tone2is the most error-prone tone among the four tones; the type of error is misread as arising tone. According to the acoustic analysis of the recording of the disyllabic word, the performance of Tone2is still the most unstable, mainly for the low pitch on the break point, easy to be confused with the rising tone. In addition, the whispered syllable duration is too long, the articulation is not as natrual as native speakers.3. The comparative analysis of Tone2and Tone3: This section aims to discuss Tone2and Tone3mixed situation, and intrinsic motivation. By SPSS software, we found that in certain subjects’articulation data of Tone2and the Tone3do not have statistically significant difference. By contrast, we believe that Tone2is pronounced so low that tone3cannot be distinguished effectively. Therefore, Tone2’s error is the cause of the error between Tone2and Tone3.This paper aims to introduce the experimental phonetics method to second language acquisition research, makes the study of second language phonetical acquisition is more objective. And with the data supported, the analysis would become more comprehensive and thorough.