Chinese Phonetics Accuracy Of Advanced Learners During The Production Of Natural Speech

In the field of second language acquisition,phonetics has been established as the foundation of learning a language.Specifically with respect to teaching Chinese as a foreign language,such research has been carried out extensively,but the perspectives of these studies mainly include contrastive analysis,interlanguage,and pronunciation error analysis.Moreover,these each examined Chinese learners’syllabic initials(声母)、syllabic finals(韵母),and intonation with respect to isolated words or phrases,rather than continuous speech.Such studies inevitably fail to consider the numerous factors at play during the production of natural speech.In this thesis,20 American students at the NFLP Nanjing Center with Chinese speaking proficiency ACTFL OPI level Advanced or higher were studied.We used questionnaires and interviews to examine their pronunciation during segments of speech and their struggles and feelings with respect to their study of Chinese pronunciation.Our results show that:(1)There exist great differences in accuracy of pronunciation during natural speech production for different groups,i.e.Chinese-Americans spoke with more accurate tones and syllabic finals(韵母)than non-Chinese-Americans;the disparity was particularly great for tones.On the other hand,non-Chinese-Americans spoke with more accurate syllabic initials(声母).Regardless of the nature of the error,both groups showed centralization and regularity in occurrence of errors.(2)Self-confidence has a large impact on a learner’s speaking ability.Generally,students who have a high degree of confidence will speak with better pronunciation and vice versa.(3)There is no direct correlation between accuracy of speech and willingness to accept other people’s corrections,but to some extent,this willingness can have a positive effect on a student’s’ speaking ability.Finally,according to the conclusion of the study,it provides some suggestions of Chinese phonetics for American students’ teaching.In conclusion,we have presented some novel ideas in the field of teaching Chinese language to American students.