Acoustic Feature-Based Pronunciation Test On Non-native Speaker Of Chinese Affricates

As the Chinese language becomes more and more popular among foreigners all over the world, there is no doubt that mistakes made by them have drawn greater attention in teaching. Pronunciation, being the material shell of language, has become a focal point. The vast majority of them have a heavy foreign accent in their pronunciation. Various studies have indicated that the typical'foreign accent'is mainly embodied in the pronunciation of Chinese vowels, consonants and tones. Thus, how to evaluate these pronunciation errors in an accurate and scientific way has become a hot topic in academic field.Nowadays, whether in the system of HSK or in PSC, rating of the pronunciation part is totally based on experience, thus causing discrepancy between different raters. Judging just from listening and the shape of the speakers'mouth, it is difficult for raters to form unified assessment criteria due to the influence of personal pitch, interference of accent and other factors. To solve these problems, this research proposes a diagnosing pronunciation test of Chinese based on the acoustic features and aims at exploring the applying value of Pratt in diagnosing the six Chinese affricates in terms of three major acoustics parameters of affricates, voice onset time(VOT), duration of aspiration (AD) and the ratio of AD to vowel duration (VD). Combined with CAP—the hypothesized three-level rating scale, this study will also attempt to quantify CAP and further provide a well-established and effective rating criteria for pronunciation diagnostic test of non-native Chinese learners. The following research questions are proposed:1. Can acoustic features of the consonants, i.e. VOT, AD, and the ratio of AD to VD be applied to the test of Chinese affricates?2. Can CAP, the hypothesized three-level rating scale be quantified? If possible, what is the specific range of each level as for Chinese affricates? Or given that it can not be quantified, then to what extent CAP can be distinguished by the acoustic features?3. What typical errors do non-native speaker of Chinese usually make in pronouncing Chinese affricates?In this study, pronunciations are segmented and acoustic features are extracted by Praat. A comparison between the test participants and standard pronunciation is conducted. Correct, acceptable and problematic pronunciations are analyzed. The data has shown that it is feasible to apply acoustic features to Chinese pronunciation tests. As for VOT and AD, It is most significant in distinguishing the correct aspirated pronunciations from the acceptable ones. As for the ratio of AD to VD, it is most significant in distinguishing correct pronunciations from the problematic ones. The biggest problem for Chinese students is the pronunciation of the aspirated affricates, in which they made a shorter duration of VOT and AD. From the aspect of place of pronunciation, they make confusion among the retroflex and dental alveolar.