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Abstract

This study was designed to test the effectiveness of two teaching methods on production of Mandarin Tone 3 by English-speaking learners. The control group of students (n=12) received the traditional instruction in which the direction of Tone 3 was emphasized while the experimental group of students (n=12) received the innovative instruction in which the height of Tone 3 was emphasized. The performance of these two groups of participants on producing Tone 3 on learnt and new words in the tonal environments of monosyllabic words, disyllabic words and sentences were tested three times (one month learning, two months learning, and three month learning). The results show the advantages of employing tonal height focused teaching method to teach Tone 3. First, tonal height focused teaching method works better on training students to produce tones in connected tonal environments which skill is more important for L2 learners to acquire for making phrases and sentences. Second, tonal height focused teaching method not only facilitate L2 learners to produce Tone 3 in trained lexical context, but also in untrained lexical context. It helps L2 learners to develop a self-learning skill on pronouncing unfamiliar words.

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  • Subject
    • Modern & Classical Languages

  • Date submitted

    18 July 2022

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  • Additional information
    • Author Biography:

      Yunjuan He is assistant professor of Chinese at the University of North Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Florida. Her research interests fall within and across the fields of sound systems and second language acquisition. Her research investigates how linguistic, social and pedagogical factors affect the perception and production of L2 segmental and supersegmental features. Currently, she is conducting several studies on examining the effect of various teaching methods on the acquisition of Mandarin tones by American learners.