Examining the auditory approach: Lexical effects in the perceptual judgment of Chinese L2 tone production
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Yan Jiang
Yan Jiang is a Ph.D. candidate at Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include L2 teaching and learning, tone and intonation, as well as computer-assisted language learning. She received a B. A. in English from Tsinghua University, China, and an M. A. in Education from San Diego State University. She has published articles in the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation and Proceedings of the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference.
Abstract
Auditory perception is generally used by raters who are asked to evaluate the accuracy of tone production by non-native speakers (hereafter NNSs) who are learning Mandarin Chinese. However, its validity needs to be examined as the native speaking (hereafter NS) listeners’ lexical knowledge (i.e., knowing the possible combination of syllables and tones) may affect their judgments in different listening contexts. This lexical effect has been reported at the segmental level in non-tonal languages (McClelland et al. 2006; Norris et al. 2000). The present study extends to the suprasegmental dimension and compares NS listeners’ judgment on NNSs’ tonal performance of high frequency disyllabic word covering Mandarin disyllabic tonal combination in three lexical contexts, namely (1) hearing pairs of humming tones (syllables removed via Praat); (2) hearing disyllabic words (syllables + tones); (3) hearing disyllabic words + seeing target pinyin orthography. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect of lexical contexts on the perceived tone accuracy, which increased when auditory and visual lexical cues were available, as in Conditions 2 and 3. Acoustic analyses further revealed the nature of the two lexical effects. Hearing words had a positive effect on the precision of the NSs’ tonal perception compared to hearing tones only. However, the visual presence of pinyin misled NSs to compensate for learners’ tone production deficiencies. The findings have implications for future research involving the rating of tones using auditory approach and also shed light on the teaching of Mandarin tones to NNSs.
摘要
听力识別在对外汉语声调教学中被广泛使用来测试学生的声调发音。然而，施测者掌握的句法知识（即听到音节便知其可能的声调）或会影响其判断，所以该方法的有效性需要被测试。研究表明在非声调语言（如英语）中句法语境对音节识別具有影响。本文延伸到超音节维度，比较了三种不同语境中施测者对学生声调发音的判断，即（1）只听到声调；（2）听到完整词语；（3）听到完整词语并看到目标词语的拼音。统计分析发现句法语境对声调识別有显著影响，在后两种语境中同样声调被判断为发音准确的比率依次上升。声学分析进一步表明听到完整词语有助于迅速准确地识別学生的声调发音。但是，看到目标词语的拼音则导致测评人忽视学生的声调发音错误。
About the author
Yan Jiang is a Ph.D. candidate at Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include L2 teaching and learning, tone and intonation, as well as computer-assisted language learning. She received a B. A. in English from Tsinghua University, China, and an M. A. in Education from San Diego State University. She has published articles in the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation and Proceedings of the Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers, the comments of Dr. Dorothy M. Chun and Dr. Jin Sook Lee on an earlier version of the manuscript, and the assistance of Dr. Xiang Qiu, Dr. Jinpeng Wang, Jingwen Wu and Yunyun Zhao and all of the students who participated in the study.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Papers in English
- Investigating the degree of humorous enjoyment in reading Chinese language errors
- Examining the auditory approach: Lexical effects in the perceptual judgment of Chinese L2 tone production
- The acquisition of Mandarin dative constructions by L2 and heritage learners
- Papers in Chinese
- 英语母语者汉语双数量结构的习得
- 美国汉语学习者的理想汉语自我
- 韩国学生汉语中介语的平均句长与句长分布发展
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Papers in English
- Investigating the degree of humorous enjoyment in reading Chinese language errors
- Examining the auditory approach: Lexical effects in the perceptual judgment of Chinese L2 tone production
- The acquisition of Mandarin dative constructions by L2 and heritage learners
- Papers in Chinese
- 英语母语者汉语双数量结构的习得
- 美国汉语学习者的理想汉语自我
- 韩国学生汉语中介语的平均句长与句长分布发展
