Research On The Acquisition Of Tone3by Non-native Chinese Children Under The Immersion Teaching Environment

Chinese tone is an important part of syllable structure. Same as consonants and vowels, it is one significant feature that Chinese different from other languages.Tone teaching has always been the emphasis and difficult of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. For example, for non-native Chinese learners, there are many difficulties in the acquisition process of Tone3. Many scholars have done a lot of research in this area. Under the Chinese immersion teaching environment, however, there are very few literatures and books which use Chinese tone3teaching as a research topic with the children who are non-native Chinese learners as research object.The thesis based on Krashen’s second language acquisition theory and Interlanguage Theory. The author chose35non-native Chinese children from Yuehua International Class of Dezhou, Shandong province. By using the questionnaire, recording and listening experiments, the thesis researched the acquisition rules of Chinese tone3under the Chinese immersion teaching environment. The thesis intends to find out and conclude the causes of Chinese tone3errors and explores some teaching strategies correspondingly.The result indicated that the Chinese immersion teaching environment could motivate the learner’s initiative. The research on Chinese tone3acquisition shows a steady increase trend as the children get older, and most of the errors in tone3pronunciation are tone type errors, tone value errors and tone replacements that using similar tone of mother language instead of the standard tone3. Further, the result also points out that there is close relationship between the acquisition of Chinese tone3and the interests of learning, language environment, the teacher’s attitude and the input quantity of the effective teaching language used in the class.The thesis’s result can provide solid evidence for second language acquisition theory, and it has instructional meaning for Chinese tone teaching. In the process of teaching Chinese tones, we suggest that teachers should provide a natural language communication environment, focus on training learners have good pronunciation habits and good sense of tone, In the conversation class, the teachers are suggested to strengthen the practices of tone listening, repeat and imitate. Meanwhile, the author hopes that the research result can make the teachers teaching Chinese as a second language pay more attention to the Chinese tone teaching. In addition, the author hopes that the research result can provide some reference value in the teaching activities and teaching strategies used to teach the non-native Chinese children.