Perception and Production of Mandarin Tones by Native Speakers and L2 Learners

Perception and Production of Mandarin Tones by Native Speakers and L2 Learners
Author: Bei Yang
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2015-02-10
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3662446456

Tones are the most challenging aspect of learning Chinese as a second language, and L2 learners’ perceptual categories differ in important and fascinating ways from those of native speakers. This book explores the relationship between tone perception and production among native speakers and non-native learners as illustrated in the experiments the author conducted with native speakers, true learners and heritage learners, all of whom were tested on their ability to produce tones naturally and to perceive 81 synthesized tones in various contexts. The experiments show that each group processes tones differently with regard to both register (tonal level) and contour (tonal shape). The results also reveal how three types of cues – acoustic, psychological and contextual – influence non-native speakers’ tone perception and production.

Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition

Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition
Author: Huei‐Mei Liu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9811576068

This book addresses important issues of speech processing and language learning in Chinese. It highlights perception and production of speech in healthy and clinical populations and in children and adults. This book provides diverse perspectives and reviews of cutting-edge research in past decades on how Chinese speech is processed and learned. Along with each chapter, future research directions have been discussed. With these unique features and the broad coverage of topics, this book appeals to not only scholars and students who study speech perception in preverbal infants and in children and adults learning Chinese, but also to teachers with interests in pedagogical applications in teaching Chinese as Second Language.

Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones

Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones
Author: Hang Zhang
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2018-07-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 900436479X

Tones are the most challenging aspect of learning Chinese pronunciation for adult learners and traditional research mostly attributes tonal errors to interference from learners’ native languages. In Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones, Hang Zhang offers a series of cross-linguistic studies to argue that there are factors influencing tone acquisition that extend beyond the transfer of structures from learners’ first languages, and beyond characteristics extracted from Chinese. These factors include universal phonetic and phonological constraints as well as pedagogical issues. By examining non-native Chinese tone productions made by speakers of non-tonal languages (English, Japanese, and Korean), this book brings together theory and practice and uses the theoretical insights to provide concrete suggestions for teachers and learners of Chinese.

Practice in a Second Language

Practice in a Second Language
Author: Robert DeKeyser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2007-03-12
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521684040

This volume focuses on 'practice' from a theoretical perspective and includes implications for the classroom.

Second Language Speech Learning

Second Language Speech Learning
Author: Ratree Wayland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108882366

Including contributions from a team of world-renowned international scholars, this volume is a state-of-the-art survey of second language speech research, showcasing new empirical studies alongside critical reviews of existing influential speech learning models. It presents a revised version of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) for the first time, an update on a cornerstone of second language research. Chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: theoretical progress, segmental acquisition, acquiring suprasegmental features, accentedness and acoustic features, and cognitive and psychological variables. Every chapter provides new empirical evidence, offering new insights as well as challenges on aspects of the second language speech acquisition process. Comprehensive in its coverage, this book summarises the state of current research in second language phonology, and aims to shape and inspire future research in the field. It is an essential resource for academic researchers and students of second language acquisition, applied linguistics and phonetics and phonology.

The Acquisition of Chinese as a Second Language Pronunciation

The Acquisition of Chinese as a Second Language Pronunciation
Author: Chunsheng Yang
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9811538093

This book is the first edited book to cover a wide range of issues related to Chinese as a second language (CSL) speech, including tone and segment acquisition and processing, categorical perception of tones, CSL fluency, CSL intelligibility/comprehensibility and accentedness, and pronunciation pedagogy. Moreover, the book addresses both theoretical and pedagogical issues. It offers an essential go-to book for anyone who is interested in CSL speech, e.g. CSL speech researchers, Chinese instructors, CSL learners, and anyone interested in second language speech.

The Acquisition of L2 Mandarin Prosody

The Acquisition of L2 Mandarin Prosody
Author: Chunsheng Yang
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-02-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027243713

This book examines the acquisition of L2 Mandarin prosody, a less explored area in SLA. While acknowledging that tone acquisition is one of the most important aspects in acquiring L2 Mandarin phonology, the book demonstrates that phrase- and utterance-level prosody is equally important. Specifically, this book discusses the acquisition of Mandarin lexical tones and utterance-level prosody, the interaction of tones and intonation, the acquisition of Tone 3 sandhis, the temporal differences between L1 and L2 Mandarin discourse, and the relationship between intelligibility, comprehensibility and foreign accent perception in L2 Chinese. In addition, a whole chapter is exclusively devoted to the pedagogy of L2 Mandarin prosody. Studies in this book further our understanding of speech prosody in L1 and L2 and showcase the interesting interaction of phonetics, phonology, and pedagogy in SLA. This book will be of great interest to SLA researchers and graduate students, applied linguists, Chinese linguists, and Chinese practitioners.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition
Author: Chuanren Ke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 662
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1317367901

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition is the first reference work of its kind. The handbook contains twenty contributions from leading experts in the field of Chinese SLA, covering a wide range of topics such as social contexts, linguistic perspectives, skill learning, individual differences and learning settings and testing. Each chapter covers historical perspectives, core issues and key findings, research approaches, pedagogical implications, future research direction and additional references. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition is an essential reference for Chinese language teachers and researchers in Chinese applied linguistics and second language acquisition.