The Effects Of L2 Input On The Early Minnan-Mandarin Bilinguals' De-accent Of Mandarin

The current study probed into the de-accent of Mandarin in early Minnan-Mandarin bilinguals.32 participants were recruited in the experiment, with 5 Mandarin monolinguals as control group for Mandarin norm and with 27 Minnan-Mandarin bilinguals as participants. These participants were from the same grade (Grade 3) in the same school and had been taught by the same group of teachers for three years. Picture-naming task and picture description task were used to investigate the participants' production of Mandarin consonants and vowels. This experiment combined the acoustic analysis method with listener judgment method. Results of acoustic analysis indicated that different from Mandarin monolinguals, the early Minnan-Mandarin bilinguals produced Mandarin consonants and vowels with an accent, which was due to the influence of Minnan dialect experience. In order to analyze what variables affected the degree of accent, listener judgment was conducted to evaluate the participants'accent. The results proved that the guardians'input, to a large extent, influenced the participants' perception and production of L2. The more accurate the guardians' input was, the better ability of Mandarin production the participants have. Moreover, TV hours, which meant the amount of L2 input, also influenced the participants' L2 production and the process of de-accent. In other words, both quantity and quality of L2 input affected the degree of accent and the latter had a greater effect. Therefore, different from previous studies which always neglected the importance of quality of input, the current study demonstrated both quantity and quality of input affected the de-accent of L2 and emphasized the importance of quality of L2 input in the process of de-accent.