Man Gao¹ Chun Zhang²

1. Teaching Mandarin Tones to University Students in Nordic Countries-- Analysis of error patterns in a perception study by Danish, Finnish and Swedish students • ¹Dalarna University, Sweden • ²Aarhus University, Denmark Man Gao¹ Chun Zhang²

2. Background • Dramatic increase in number of students studying Chinese in Nordic countries • One major challenge: four lexical tones • Urgent need for effective teaching methodology for tones in Nordic countries • Understanding of tone perception and production by learners • Understanding of native language’s (e.g. Danish, Finnish, Swedish) influence on lexical tone learning

3. Introduction • Lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese Time-normalized pitch contours of the four Mandarin tones produced by a native speaker Stylized representation (Chao) 5 Hz 2 1

4. Findings from Previous StudiesPerception of Mandarin tones • Kiriloff (1969) and Chen (1997): English-speaking learners often confused Tone 2 and 3 in perception • Kiriloff (1969): Tone 4 is easiest to identify, followed by Tone 1, Tone 3 and Tone 2 • Broselow, Hurtig, Ringen (1987) • Tone 4 is least difficult to identify when read in isolation and final position • Hao (2007, 2012) • Tone 1 (99%) and Tone 4 (96%) are least difficult to identify, Tone 2 (83%) and Tone 3 (81%) are more difficult

5. BackgroundSwedish • Swedish classified as a ‘word accent language’ (Bruce, 1977), ‘pitch-accent language’ (McCawley, 1978) or ‘tonal accent language’ (Hirst & Cristo, 1998). • Pitch movements over disyllabic words lexically contrastive; but not for monosyllabic words

6. BackgroundDanish • Danish – one of the North Germanic languages. Danish and Swedish both belong to East Scandinavian sub-branch. • Prosodic feature - stød • Stød/non-stød distinction roughly parallels Swedish Accent I/Accent II distinction (Grønnum et al., 2013) læser /ˈlɛːsɐ/ "reader“ vs. læser /ˈlɛːˀsɐ/ "reads“ • Intonation in Danish (Tøndering, 2003): • Steeply falling pitch contour -- declarative sentences • Falling or flat pitch contour.

7. BackgroundFinnish • Finnish is a non-tonal language. • Word tone is not distinctive in Finnish, unlike Swedish. • Intonation in Finnish • Most common intonation pattern in ’non-emotional’ Finnish is descending pitch contour. (Iivonen, 1998; Suomi et al. ,2008)

8. Research Goals • How well are Mandarin tones perceived by learners from Nordic countries? • Influence of learners native language on learning Mandarin tones. • Implications to teachers of Mandarin Chinese.

9. MethodsParticipants • Danishuniversity students enrolled in true-beginnerChinesecourses • 13 students (5F/8M), studiedChinese under 6 months • Finnish university students enrolled in true-beginnerChinese courses • 10 students (7F/3M),havestudiedChinese under 6 months • Swedish university students enrolled in true-beginner Chinese courses • 15 students (9F/6M), studiedChinese under 6 months

12. Task I: Identifyingtone in isolation Task 2: Identifyingtone in context

13. Result-1Tone in isolation * Average Accuracy Percentage of Danish Students

14. Result-1Tone in isolation * Average Accuracy Percentage of Finnish Students

15. Result-1Tone in isolation Average Accuracy Percentage of Swedish Students

16. Result-1Comparison

17. Perception of Tone in IsolationSummary • Danish, Finnish and Swedish students display overall highly similar pattern in perception of Mandarin tones, with minor variations • It is much more challenging to perceive Tone 2 (rising tone) correctly than T3 and T4 (falling tone) • Tone 3 (low falling) is easy to identify correctly, unlike English-speaking learners.

18. Nordic students vs. English students • Tone perception by English students (Kiriloff, 1969; Broselow et al., 1987; Hao, 2007) • Tone 3, Tone 2 >> Tone 1, Tone 4 • Nordic students seem to display error pattern that is quite different from English-speaking students when perceiving Mandarin tones

19. Effect of native language • Influence of the native language on the perception of a foreign language has consistently proven to be significant in previous studies (Odlin, 1989; Jenkins & Yeni-Komshian, 1995; Flege, 1995; Best, 1995) • Falling pitch contour are commonly seen in languages spoken in Nordic countries • Both Swedish and Danish have prosodic features that distinguish meaning between words, and phonologically they are represented as HL (falling pitch contour) • Both Danish and Finnish are reported to have falling intonation pattern at sentence level • Danish, Finnish and Swedish students are more sensitive to tones with falling contour (i.e. Tone 3 and Tone 4).

20. Result-2Tone in context * Average Accuracy Percentage of Danish Students

21. Result-2Tone in context Average Accuracy Percentage of Finnish Students

22. Result-2Tone in context Average Accuracy Percentage of Swedish Students

23. Result-2Comparison

24. Perception of Tone in ContextSummary • Danish, Finnish and Swedish students also display highly similar pattern when perceiving Mandarin tones in context • Tones in context are much more challenging than those in isolation, average accuracy rate under 60% • All four tones are about equally difficult, though students achieve slightly higher scores with Tone 1 and Tone 4 syllables • Results can be explained in terms of shortened duration, tone co-articulation and influence of students’ native language.

25. Teaching Mandarin tones to students from non-tonal language background • Take students’ native language into consideration when planning teaching / pronunciation drills. • Use both listening and pronunciation drills • Practicingtones in context: vowel – syllable – disyllabic /trisyllabicwords – phrases – sentences • Use different methods to explain four lexical tones • Graphic material • Contrast with students’ native language

26. Tak!Kiitos!Tack!谢谢！