Production And Perception Of Mandarin Chinese Tones By Kazakh Students Learning Chinese As A Second Language

A growing number of scholars have investigated foreigners learning Mandarin Chinese tones,but the conclusions are not consistent.Most of previous studies mainly focused on the subjects coming from America,Britain,Japan,Korea,Russia and so on.Up to now,little attention have been paid to Kazakh learners.With the development of the Belt and Road,more and more Kazakhs are coming to China to learn Chinese.However,as for Kazakh learners,it is hard to master the Mandarin Chinese tones.The present study looks into the production and perception of monosyllabic Mandarin tones by Kazakh learners.This thesis intends to address the following three research questions:(1)What are the acoustic features of Mandarin Chinese tones produced by Kazakh students? What are the similarities and differences of acoustic features compared with those of native speakers?(2)What are the orders of acquisition and error patterns in producing and perceiving Mandarin Chinese tones by Kazakh students?(3)How does Kazakh students’ perception correlate with their production of Mandarin Chinese tones?The production and perception experiments were both carried out in phonetic laboratory in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology(JUST).In the production experiment,the Field Phon2.1.2 was used for recording the production data.The phonetic software,Praat 6.0.14 was used to annotate and analyze the subjects’ production.In the perception experiment,Cool edit Pro 12.0 was used for playing the recordings uttered by a professional male Chinese speaker.There are 16 subjects(8 females and 8 males)studying Mandarin Chinese in JUST.They are all native Kazakh speakers.The materials used in the production experiment consist of 48 monosyllabic Mandarin tones(12 different characters×4 tones).Each character was repeated three times,and 2304 samples were obtained(16 subjects× 48 characters × 3 times).The Praat 6.0.14 was used to annotate the vowel of the materials,that is,the tone part.The F0 was normalized to extract 11 time points,and tonal duration was also normalized,in order to analyze the acoustic features of Mandarin tones and made a comparison between native speakers and Kazakh learners.Then the recordings of production were evaluated by four native speakers with the help of Praat to calculate the acquisition order and error patterns.The materials of tone perception uttered by a college student from Beijing are the same as those of production.The perception experiment requests subjects to attach a tone mark to the corresponding pinyin in the perception test.A total of 768 samples(16subjects×48characters)were obtained,which were evaluated by the author based on the standard answers to calculate the accuracy rate and error patterns.The SPSS was used to analyse the correlation between the tone perception and production.This paper mainly draws the following findings:1.Acoustic features can be analyzed in terms of tone contour,tone value,tone register and tone duration.As to the contour part,T1 contour keeps relatively a high level.T2 contour shows an upward trend on the whole,which declines significantly at the beginning points,and then keeps rising.T3 contour displays a falling-rising shape.Kazakh subjects demonstrate a falling contour of T4.As to tone values,the values of four tones should be 55,325,214,53.As for the tone registers,T1 register is high;T2 register lies in higher part of acoustic space;T3 register ranges in the high,middle and low regions;T4 register is high.The order of normalized duration is that T3(1.35s)>T1(1.12s)>T2(1.02s)>T4(0.51s).There are some similarities and differences of acoustic features between Kazakh students and native speakers.As to contour part,the starting points of T1 are higher,and the ending points are lower.The starting points of T2 by Kazakh students are similar with that by native speakers.However,the general contours between them are a little different.The ending points of T3 are much higher than those of native speakers,while the starting points of Kazakh speakers are a little lower than those of native speakers.As for T4,Kazakh students show a falling contour.However,the contour of T4 by Kazakh students is not deep and complete enough.From the aspects of tone register and tone value,T1 has a lower register and the tone value is the same as native speakers’.T2 value is different from native speakers’,and the register is lower.T3 value is the same as that of native speakers.T3 register is a little lower compared to that of native speakers at the starting points.T4 value is different from native speakers’,and its register is higher than that of native speakers.In duration part,the order of the normalized duration by Kazakh students is the same as the order by native speakers.2.According to the analysis on acquisition order and error patterns of tone production,the acquisition order in difficulty is that T3(97.57%)< T1(91.84%)< T4(79.86%)< T2(28.47%),the percentages in parentheses are production accuracy.T3 is the easiest tone to produce,and the majority of errors involved T2.Through analysis of tone production confusion patterns,it’s found that the confusion between T2 and T3 was a predominant production problem.The study also found that the four tones confused with each other,except that T3 wasn’t confused with T4.Based on the major findings of perception experiment,the study presented the acquisition order in difficulty: T3(90.63%)<T1(85.94%)<T4(81.77%)<T2(74.48%),the percentages in parentheses are perception accuracy.The perception order is the same as the production order.T2 is the most demanding tone to perceive.And the Kazakh subjects perceived T3 best.Based on the analysis of confusion patterns,it’s found that the confusion between T1 and T2 was a predominant perception problem.It’s worthwhile to note that subjects didn’t confuse T1 as T4.Generally speaking,the total accuracy of tone perception is higher than that of tone production,and the confusion rate of tone perception is much lower that that of tone production.3.Based on the Pearson Correlation analysis in SPSS,the result(r=.737,p=.001<0.05)shows that there exists a positive correlation between tone perception and tone production.The research findings can provide implications for SLA studies and teaching practices.Meanwhile,the thesis greatly enriches the study of Kazakh students learning Chinese as a second language.